Post-troika Ireland - Reform as important as more cuts

Our bad, heads-in-the-sand habit of believing that by just enacting legislation we have resolved the difficulties that made the legislation necessary in the first place, has the potential to trip us up one more time.

Finance Minister Michael Noonan has announced that a “stringent” economic plan to replace the troika programme will be in place before we leave the bailout programme, as is anticipated, later this year.

Recognising the huge gap between income and expenditure that still dogs our public finances, he has warned that the programme of cuts — austerity as the zeitgeist has it — demanded by the EU-IMF-ECB programme continue if we are to realise the objectives that define a functioning society and economy.