IT is repetitive in the extreme to suggest that this was another momentous week for Ireland, but the truth is that it was. However, it has joined a lot of other momentous weeks for Ireland in recent times.

ON Tuesday, Ireland once again featured on the front page of the esteemed Financial Times, and once again for all of the wrong reasons.

ANOTHER very difficult week for the beleaguered Irish economy, yet our Dáil remains in recess. One gets a strong sense of “Nero fiddling while Rome burns”.

THIS time two years ago we were starting to see the unravelling of the US sub- prime mortgage market, but I don’t think any of us could have foreseen the carnage that was about to go down in the next couple of years.

SINCE I launched my latest economic outlook, I have been subjected to an incredible amount of personal insult as a result of a suggestion I made that public sector workers earning more than €50,000 per annum might take a salary cut of up to 10% on their earnings over that amount.

THE public was led to believe in recent weeks that Budget 2009 would be very rough and that has indeed turned out to be the case.

FOR investors in anything at the moment, it continues to be an extremely uncertain and volatile climate.

THE subprime crisis was the big story of 2007, is the big story of 2008 and will inevitably be the big story of 2009 and probably beyond.

THE summer silly season is coming to an abrupt end and over the coming days the nation will be returning to schools and workplaces to face into the challenges that the new work and academic year will bring.

THE news on the jobs front this week has not made for very pleasant reading.