EU warning to keep spending within limits

IRELAND will have to keep its spending to the limits agreed with the EU, whatever the global economic situation, the EU’s economic and monetary affairs commissioner Joa-quin Almunia has warned.

country will be given the three extra years it requested, to 2013, to reduce the budget deficit to less than 3% of GDP from this year’s expected 9.5% deficit.

This will mean slashing spending and raising extra taxes over the next four years.