Row flares over budget and EU spending rules

A row about whether the Coalition is playing fast and loose with the EU’s spending rules flared yesterday after the chair of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council signalled it continues to have serious concerns about the spending plans of Budget 2016.

As reported by the Irish Examiner, analysts were astonished last Friday when the Department of Finance announced supplementary budgets worth €1.5bn across health, transport, social protection, and education.

The department said that the expenditure was justified because with the economy growing so strongly, the exchequer was harvesting billions more in tax revenues than it had anticipated.