Political parties ‘dishonest’ over ability to meet 2014 target

POLITICAL parties were being “dishonest” by continuing to claim the national deficit could be reduced to 3% of GDP by 2014, a conference of leading international economists at Croke Park was told yesterday.

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.