Ireland was behaving until bondholder debt

Former Bloxham economist Joe Gill claims that “when the euro was launched in 1999 every dog in the street knew that economic management in core Europe was far more disciplined than around its fringes” (Irish Examiner 19/9/12).

However Matt Cooper has pointed out that it was Germany and France, who were the first to break the Maastricht rules on excessive government budget deficits (Irish Examiner 18/5/12). Professor Laura Tyson, Berkeley, has pointed out that Spain and Ireland were models of fiscal rectitude in 2007 with far lower debt-to-GDP ratios than Germany, (Irish Examiner 7/6/12). Peter Dixon, Commerzbank Economist, developed a mathematical metric that accesses how compliant each of the European countries would have been with the Stability Treaty’s provisions between 1994 and 2011. France scored 0%, Germany just 11%. Ireland scored 56%, much better than the big two. We in Ireland were doing fine until private bondholder debt was taken on by the Irish taxpayers.

Cllr Fiona Kerins,