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Colm McCarthy Opinion Government stubbornly defies logic, with forward planning on the back burner

It was perhaps a natural choice for Eamon Ryan to opt for the transport and energy portfolios when the Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael/Green government was being assembled in June 2020.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Hyperinflation or hyperbole? Food price rises not that steep

Pressure on the Government to counter the cost-of-living surge is being resisted. Measures already taken will cost €2.4bn in a full year and include the electricity bill credit, supplementary social spending and a reduction in excise duty on motor fuels.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Brexit and Johnson’s endless bluster will exhaust UK voters

Six years ago this week, UK voters opted narrowly to leave the European Union, by a margin of 52pc to 48pc. The widening rift between London and Brussels, the nadir in Anglo-Irish relations and the threat to the Northern Ireland agreement have their origins in the course chosen following the referendum more than in the departure itself.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Populist policies won’t save us from facing tough economic choices

Unaffordable housing, insecure energy supplies and rising debt interest cloud the economic outlook. Soft options have been exhausted, spin and counter-spin substitute for analysis and public discontent flourishes.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Ministers don’t do rosters, so why blame airport chaos on them?

Delays at Dublin Airport last week resulted in a “blame the Government” response in Dáil Éireann and in the print and broadcast media.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion While politicians debated grand designs, other projects withered and died

Ambitious targets for public investment over the next several years cannot be delivered, due to overshoots on the bill for major projects. The initial cost estimates were unrealistic.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Britain’s shoddy diplomacy over Brexit bordering on unbelievable

In a statement on Tuesday evening, UK foreign secretary Liz Truss told commissioner Maros Sefcovic the EU bore a responsibility to ensure the Northern Ireland Protocol, part of the UK’s Brexit deal, “delivered on its original objectives”.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Interest rates will rise and we can’t buy our way out of that

‘The era of free money is very much coming to an end,” according to the secretary- general of the Department of Finance. John Hogan was addressing the Dáil Public Accounts Committee on Thursday and his comments were received without visible alarm from the assembled deputies.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Neutrality saves us money – and the neighbours are no threat

Finland and Sweden are on the verge of applying to join Nato, which would leave just four out of 27 European Union countries outside the alliance — the two small Mediterranean islands of Cyprus and Malta, plus Austria and Ireland.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Free money is not the way to head off a crisis

Managing the macro economy involves three perspectives. These are the short-term — the next six months or a year; the medium-term — the next four or five years; and the long-term — the issues that demand to be addressed decades in advance. From the perspective of Irish governments in recent times, only the short-term merits attention, with the medium-term left to the civil service and the long-term to sporadic commissions and academic worrywarts.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Ireland can’t ‘take one for the team’ again over energy crisis

As the war in Ukraine enters its seventh week, there is no prospect of an early outcome that would take the pressure off energy markets in Europe.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Freeloaders in the leafy suburbs: do you think they’d mind paying for their road use?

Inducing taxpayers into tax-avoidance schemes with expensive tax breaks is hardly a viable budget strategy. That is the view of the UK’s Office of Budget Responsibility, an independent body akin to our Fiscal Council.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Power play: being at the end of the gas pipeline is a gamble

European governments have been taking decisions rapidly, including policy reversals, to address issues of energy security. In Ireland exclusive focus is on the impossible task of compensating everyone, aka ‘hard-pressed families’, for higher import prices; and the threat to security of supply, especially for gas, has been downplayed.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion We can’t back sanctions on Vladimir Putin and then expect cheap petrol at the same time

An early ceasefire in Ukraine would end the bloodshed — but will not end the economic and financial war already under way.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Paying the price for an energy crisis

No policies available to the Irish Government can restore either the cost or the security of energy supply that was available a few months ago. Measures can be taken to protect vulnerable groups or economic sectors, but the country is collectively worse off when import costs rise. In a small energy-importing country, any notion that permanent exemption from the consequences of the war in Ukraine can be engineered by tax cuts alone is wishful thinking.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Apart from fossil fuels, there’s really not much to hobble in the Russian economy

Sanctions imposed by the US and European countries will, according to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, “hobble the Russian economy”.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Middle-aged renters’ live in dread of getting by on a state pension

Pension coverage improved in the past couple of years, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO). In round numbers, the percentage of workers with entitlements additional to the state pension rose from 60pc in the third quarter of 2019 to 66pc by last autumn. Coverage varies greatly by age.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Government now on borrowed time to get economic plan right

The recent surge in inflation prompted strident demands in the Dáil last week for the Government to offset the rise and compensate those affected. There are to be some one-off measures, but the surge heralds a more significant economic policy problem.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Curb your enthusiasm: while we live in hope, things could still go horribly wrong

Last Friday’s announcement on the relaxation of public health measures reflects official confidence that infection by the Omicron variant will result in less severe illness than its predecessors, and a smaller fraction of infected patients requiring hospitalisation. This has already happened in the Gauteng province of South Africa where the variant was first reported.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion As if the return of inflation wasn’t bad enough...

After a decade’s absence, the return of inflation is problem enough in itself — but it also threatens the holiday from debt service costs that governments have enjoyed these last few years. If the inflation spike persists, interest rates will follow. In some countries, they are already heading north.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion We are inviting a world of trouble in Covid crisis response

Dealing with a worldwide pandemic shares one key feature of other crises of collective global action. As the World Health Organisation has pointed out since the beginning almost two years ago, no one is safe until everyone is safe.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Rethink on renewables can close electricity generation gap

Ireland’s electricity system is an unseen but hugely important national asset.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion What we need to do to make next year look a lot less like this one

A common narrative during spring and summer of last year, with European governments struggling to respond to the new epidemic, was the downplaying of Covid as “just like the flu”, a seasonal nuisance long familiar in the northern hemisphere.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion There’s no evidence that letting the virus rip is good for the economy

It remains to be seen how quickly the alarming spread of Omicron in Britain is reflected here. Virologists in the UK believe the incidence could be doubling every two days. If this continues, and even if the new variant causes less severe illness, they argue that the capacity of the health system cannot withstand propagation of the disease at this extraordinary rate.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Lobby groups and stop-start policies are costing us dearly

A full house, around 50,000 people, was expected to attend yesterday’s rugby game at the Aviva stadium in Dublin, and would have been permitted under the Covid rules.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Filtering out false economies could safeguard our schools

Covid is an airborne disease, predominantly transmitted person-to-person, and virologists have been advising since the alarm was first raised that indoor spaces where people mix should have the best possible ventilation. Transmission is further inhibited if people wear masks.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion We need post-Covid policy in place as cash from bonds sure to dry up

Central banks have helped to fight the Covid downturn through purchasing sovereign debt on a scale not seen since World War II, permitting governments to run big deficits without having to pay steep interest rates.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Only bus routes, not trains, can solve Ireland’s transport dilemma

Reaction to the National Transport Authority’s (NTA) updated transport plan for Dublin, released last Wednesday, was dominated by the deferral of the MetroLink project. Despite undenied reports that the cost estimate is now €10bn versus €3bn to €4bn just two years ago, the scheme has not been cancelled. Completion instead has been pushed out to some undisclosed date in the 2030s.

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Colm McCarthy: Hands up who wants cheese from the Sahara or bananas from Cork?

Though governments should do their best to reduce carbon emissions, it is quite a stretch to claim, as RTÉ reported on Thursday evening, that the Climate Action Plan can “protect Ireland from the devastating consequences of climate change”.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Hands up who wants cheese from the Sahara or bananas from Cork?

Though governments should do their best to reduce carbon emissions, it is quite a stretch to claim, as RTÉ reported on Thursday evening, that the Climate Action Plan can “protect Ireland from the devastating consequences of climate change”.