Macdara Doyle
Today a new coalition Government takes office in Ireland following an election that was tantamount to a referendum on both the IMF/EU bailout deal and a severe austerity programme. To be blunt, both policies have failed. The former was designed to stabilise the broken Irish banking system and thereby remove the threat to the wider EU system. That hasn’t happened.
The austerity programme was designed to address difficulties in the public finances, caused by toxic bank debt and 15 years of neoliberal madness that saw the country’s tax base eroded to benefit the wealthy. But after four austerity budgets we now have higher unemployment, a bigger deficit and the return of emigration. It simply does not work.
We now have two failed strategies conspiring to squeeze all life from our economy and inflict profound, long term social damage.
