Demands on public purse limit options

A GOVERNMENT is usually formed before we are told the State’s coffers are bare and that election promises honourably made cannot, unfortunately, be delivered. 

However, it is becoming clear that the “fiscal space” that was to solve many of our problems is more like a small, boggy corner in a windy field rather than a Canadian wheat prairie stretching to the horizon. Expectations may have to be modified. Again.

Suggestions that extra costs in health, education and justice will push election promises off the can-deliver list paint a very different picture to the one that framed the election campaign. It is too early, and maybe too cynical, to say “caught again sucker” but considerable scepticism is justified. If there is a second election this year very different proposals will be necessary — and the figures supporting those arguments will need official verification.