SPECIAL REPORT DAY 1: Is austerity working? - The political impact

IT is hard to pinpoint precisely when the word austerity stopped being an abstract economic theory, or throwback to the 1980s, and became an everyday reality for this generation.

But Richard Bruton probably best marked it when, in the first week of Sept 2008, the then opposition finance spokesperson said the Cowen government had woken up from its summer slump and saw what was facing the country.

Brian Cowen’s newly formed cabinet, and its cohort of senior civil servants, had just two months earlier clocked out of Government Buildings for the summer, seemingly ignoring the forecasts pointing to the deterioration in the public finances that was creeping up on them.