Madam, – Your Editorial (August 7th) confidently asserts, “There is near-universal agreement among this State’s independent economists that there is no option but to remain on the path of fiscal correction set out by the Government last December”.
This is despite the fact that, in March, The Irish Times published an open letter co-ordinated by Tasc and signed by 28 economists, social scientists and economic analysts. The letter argued that the Government’s deflationary fiscal strategy had failed and that, without an investment-led approach, Ireland was facing into a “low-growth, high-debt future where unemployment will remain high and inequality endemic”.
The lack of consensus among economists regarding the Government’s economic strategy is not only apparent from the Tasc open letter: it is also evident from a quick glance at Opinion pieces published by The Irish Times over the past few months.
Prof Ray Kinsella recently wrote that “The ‘strategy’ prescribed by Ireland for recovery is to continue to cut the current budget deficit by 2 percentage points every year over the next four years . . . It is not a ‘strategy’; it’s a slavish adherence to an orthodoxy that howls at common sense”.
Paul Sweeney pointed out that “our economy has been through the biggest fall in the world . . . from peak to trough. A crude programme of spending cuts cannot possibly remedy that collapse.”
Prof Rob Kitchin, writing just two weeks ago, stated “targeted capital investment could, on the one hand, stimulate the economy in terms of employment and investment and provide multiplier effects across the private sector and, on the other, provide world-class infrastructure to facilitate and encourage indigenous growth and inward investment”.
Along with 25 others, they were signatories to the Tasc open letter.
So much for “near-universal agreement”. – Yours, etc,