Bailout won't save us

THERE are two huge elephants in our electoral room. One is our social welfare spend of €20bn and the second is the public service pay bill of €20bn.

The proposed cuts to these amounts to no more than clipping the elephant’s toe nails. Given our income of about €30bn, it’s not rocket science to deduce that the very most we can afford is €10bn on each of these. That leaves €10bn to cover all other public expenditure, including €5bn debt service costs in 2011 (rising to €11bn in 2013).

Dick Keane