Finance report - Ignoring advice led to catastrophe

AN objective reading of yesterday’s review of the Department of Finance’s performance over the past decade, the kind the IMF, the ECB, prospective foreign investors and the international bankers will give it, suggests all caution and responsibility was knowingly thrown to the wind by Fianna Fáil taoisaigh, finance ministers and a majority of their cabinet colleagues to buy power.

A wishful-thinking reading might conclude that civil servants made negative, limiting suggestions but that politicians, as this is a democracy, decided policy, however ruinous it might prove.

Last weekend’s annihilation of Fianna Fáil points to which of these readings would be more widely accepted. It is likely that had the report been published before voting Fianna Fáil would not have got the paltry 20 seats they propose to use as a base to rebuild their party. Once again it is hard not to be cynical about the timing of the publication of Government reports.