Here’s the truth — don’t take the word of fiscal council as gospel

“THE real function of a fiscal council is to speak truth to power, to remind governments of harsh economic facts they may not want to hear, when they least want to hear them — at budget and election time. How will the Coalition Government respond in deed to the bold advice given by the newly established Irish Fiscal Advisory Council?”

They’re the opening couple of lines of the main editorial in the Irish Times last Friday. I suppose you could say they’re an expression of the views of respectable official Ireland. Governments are supposed to quake in their boots when editorials like that appear.

I hope they don’t. It’s absolute nonsense to say that a fiscal council speaks truth to power, or that it reminds governments of harsh facts they don’t want to hear. When a national newspaper leads off one of its main editorials with thinking like that, they’re actually expressing a view of the world which is so one-sided as to be virtually blind.