Political parties ‘dishonest’ over ability to meet 2014 target
ICTU chief economist Paul Sweeney said the target could not realistically be met without immense further damage to the economy and was an “artificial target” set by the European Commission and would need to be renegotiated.
The consensus among economists at the conference entitled “Toward Recovery”, hosted by think tanks TASC and FEPS – the European progressive political foundation – was that the 2014 target was unachievable and the scale of cutbacks already inflicted on the economy had been counterproductive.
Credit Suisse economist Micheal O’Sullivan said the scale of Ireland’s recent economic collapse would see it placed among the “pantheon” of historical crashes.
He said much of the blame lay with politicians who had been “dazzled” by “developers and entrepreneurs” who were “really gamblers in drag”.
He said these politicians seemed to continue to be dazzled by the banks and had embarked on a austerity programme that had produced job losses but little else.
Mr O’Sullivan outlined the process of decoupling that was occurring between the EU’s core larger economies and periphery states such as Ireland who were facing into a “double dip recession”.
He said this process threatened the long-term cohesion of the EU.
Socialist MEP Pervenche Beres told the conference that one way of stabilising the EU economy was the mutual issuing of public debt by the EU and member states.
He said this was currently under consideration.
Several speakers stated that a economic stimulus was necessary to re-ignite economic growth and bemoaned the government’s lack of a cohesive jobs strategy.
Among those in attendance were Labour finance spokeswoman Joan Burton, MEP Proinsias De Rossa and ICTU president Jack O’Connor.
Mr De Rossa said Ireland was suffering from an EU wide “ideologically driven austerity agenda” whose real target was the dismantling of the welfare state.
Sinn Féin finance spokesman Arthur Morgan said he was more fearful of the social and economic damage that would be wrought by the size of the proposed December budget cutbacks than he had been when he had faced an “imperial army”.
Former Fine Gael justice minister Nora Owen said that the country had been “hoisted on its on petard” where the only two options seemed to be austerity or extreme austerity.
Mr Sweeney claimed Finance minister Brian Lenihan and former minister Charlie McCreevy were “economic war criminals”.
He said the men deserved the title due to the “really serious errors” they had committed.
He said Mr Lenihan should not “have been conned by the bankers when he gave the blanket guarantee” and his budgetary agenda would “drive Ireland into a deep recession”.
