Deepening austerity measures are pushing households into a “live for now” culture, causing shrinking savings and risks triggering a fresh personal finances crisis.

THE recent G-20 meeting of finance ministers in St Petersburg confirmed that the debate between growth and austerity is over — at least for now.

THE austerity policies first inflicted by Fianna Fáil, and now continued by Fine Gael, Labour, and the EU-IMF troika, have been a disaster for ordinary citizens and the economy.

AFTER two-and-a-half years in office the Government is delivering on its plan to restore order to the public finances, to get the economy out of the crisis it was in and growing again, and to get people back to work.

IT is hard to pinpoint precisely when the word austerity stopped being an abstract economic theory, or throwback to the 1980s, and became an everyday reality for this generation.