Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe has defended his fiscal policies and rejected criticism by the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (IFAC) which said in a report that the Government’s medium-term projections for the public finances are “not credible”.

The deeper the slump, economists used to say, the stronger the recovery.

Insanity, we are told, is doing the same thing time and again and expecting a different solution. By that definition — and this will come as no surprise to anyone who has watched the slow-motion train wreck that is the eurozone — the ECB is insane.

For any naïve fool who may have believed that this year’s general election might be characterised by economic and fiscal prudence, these are indeed worrying times.