The challenges ahead - Economy is the pressing problem

The Dáil has barely risen for its summer recess and already the battleground issues for the second half of the Government’s term have been identified.

Inevitably our flat-lining economy and all that means for hundreds of thousands of Irish people and businesses will dominate the agenda.

The arguments will, after five or more years of turmoil, be familiar but no less opaque for all that. The debate around the wisdom of imposing even more “austerity” on a society already living in a far more modest environment than the one we enjoyed a few years ago will continue. The cut-or-spend debate has become as much a matter of faith as economics and the appeal of less demanding budgetary policies is more seductive than the hard-line alternative. Whether a more liberal, promise-laden path is the right option or not remains almost a mystery to the great majority. That, however, will not make the debate any less passionate.