Ireland missed an opportunity in 2011 to change the way Europe dealt with the economic crisis and countries debt according to a former IMF mission chief.

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.

It is a scene that haunts the memory, the sight of the earnest Indian executive from the IMF passing a Dublin beggar on an ice cold late November’s day in 2010, on a day of national financial surrender.

The IMF has hit back at its former expert on Ireland for demanding the Government drop its austerity agenda.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said there is no evidence that Ireland's fiscal consolidation is self defeating.

The IMF’s former expert on Ireland has warned the Government to abandon its austerity agenda as Coalition parties clashed over fresh cuts to child benefit in the upcoming budget.

The Government has very little prospect of tapping the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) for a recapitalisation of the country’s legacy bank debts, according to Ashoka Mody, who was part of the IMF team that implemented the bailout programme in November 2010.

The scathing comments of IMF troika team member Professor Ashoka Mody, on the negative impact of austerity underlying Ireland’s bailout package, have long been foreshadowed in these columns.

THE International Monetary Fund has delivered a very hard-headed review of Ireland’s economy, warning that the path from crisis to stability and recovery was a very narrow one and recommending further spending cuts and increased taxation.