Decrepit public services are the big issue

POLITICAL weather vanes pop up in the strangest places. If you want to know what the next general election will be about, the answer was contained in a recent speech and interview with the head of the employers’ body, Ibec.

Like all lobby groups, Ibec has a standard shtick. Its members are interested in reducing public spending to increase room for tax cuts. Yet, in a speech entitled ‘Business Drove Ireland’s Comeback Decade’, Ibec director genera Danny McCoy sounded, in places, as if he was reading from a trade unionist hymn sheet.