When the financial crisis happened they, who know of such things, told us our prices were too high, we were spending beyond our means and had too much debt.

One of the teachers union’s original objections to the changes in the Junior Cycle was that the Certificate would be a school certificate instead of a state certificate.

I have rarely, if ever, found myself disagreeing with Minister Leo Varadkar.

When the economy is doing better than expected and growth is racing past our EU neighbours, why would you disturb this happy state? Stick to the plan and pay off some of our enormous €200 billion national debt.

Though not a Labour supporter, I take my hat off to Eamon Gilmore. He and the Labour Party have followed a quiet, but determined, ‘Tallaght strategy’ in Government over the last three years, putting the interests of country first and the interests of party second.

When I heard Leo Varadkar announce that the EU/ECB element of the troika had threatened that if the Government did not pay the €1.25bn unguaranteed debt to bank bondholders yesterday a financial bomb would go off in Dublin, and not in Frankfurt, it was all I could do to not eviscerate the TV.

NEWS that the EU mandarins have again circumvented EU treaties in order to allow the ECB lend to EU governments does not come as any surprise.

SPEAKING of the ordinary citizen, the one liberating element in the Taoiseach’s address to the nation were his words: “You are not responsible for the crisis.”

THE spat between the Government and the banks over interest rate reductions is all about who “Sean taxpayer” pays, nothing more.

ANYONE who accuses Martin McGuinness of being a terrorist misses the point of the fight for Irish freedom since the Act of Union in 1800 and before.

LEFT to themselves, banks, including the ECB — which had oversight of all EU banks — made a complete hames of the EU economy in the current crisis, not to say the lives of many of its citizens.

AS FG sweeps to power it must now deliver on election manifesto promises, chiefly the unilateral burning of subordinate bondholders and similar debt, as well as loss sharing (min 50%) with senior bank bondholders.

WHILE export growth will undoubtedly improve our balance of payments, it cannot succeed in raising us out of the mire without significant growth in domestic demand.

SEEING ministers arrive at Farmleigh House chauffeur driven in shiny Mercs and Audis to plan cuts for everyone it seems but themselves displays graphically the extent to which this Government is out of touch. Amid all the discussion about cuts and taxes, there are three cuts that must be made.

WITH reference to Dessie Ellis’s letter (October 12) on water charges and the drowning of a certain minister, I think Mr Ellis misses the point – the purpose is to raise taxes, not conserve water.

IT seems to me most economic pundits have got it wrong. In the absence of growth (and there seems little prospect of significant growth in the short term), Ireland Inc has to reach a budget surplus in order to begin to pay off the national debt.

THERE is a €750 billion EU-sponsored fund from which Ireland Inc could borrow if we wished at little more than the interest rate at which the lending countries can borrow.