ESRI upbeat on Ireland’s debt sustainability

THE current austerity programme, along with agreed cuts of €30 billion between 2008 and 2014 should “all but eliminate” Ireland’s primary debt by 2013.

In an upbeat assessment of the sustainability of Ireland’s debt, research professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) John Fitzgerald, said the forecast was entirely dependent on “a successful resolution of the current Euro area crisis” in the coming months.

“Everything that’s happened in the last nine months suggests that things are slightly better than we thought, not slightly worse,” he said.