Our political culture is at stake if we tinker with budgetary targets

IT’S very odd how the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I wonder how many people now remember Pedro Solbes? Don’t worry if you don’t, not many had heard of him at the time and fewer paid any heed to him. Pedro was a Spanish MP for Alicante. An economist by profession, he served in Spain’s socialist governments as a minister in the 1990s and was EU Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs 1999-2004. I couldn’t remember his name either, so I googled.

What sent me looking for him was listening to the chairman of the government’s Fiscal Advisory Council, Professor John McHale. McHale followed up on the Fiscal Assessment Report — think mock Leaving Cert results for Michael Noonan and Brendan Howlin — with interviews across the airwaves yesterday. McHale is fluent, keeps it relatively simple and I think is fairly persuasive. If I have it right the gist of what the Fiscal Advisory Council has to say is that so far, the Government has more or less gotten it right on the economy. Yes, they should have gone a bit further in terms of the adjustment carried out in last year’s budget, but they were lucky and have gotten away with it. Give or take I think that’s all reasonably fair. The Government has thus far, done a good job economically.