Stephen Collins: Coalition should exude pride in prudent economics

A striking feature of Irish politics at present is not the predictable criticism the Government endures on every conceivable issue but the failure of so many Coalition TDs to stand up and defend their record in robust terms because they do actually have a lot to be proud of.

In a little over a decade, the three parties now in office have had to deal with four political earthquakes of enormous magnitude. First there was the financial crisis which erupted in 2008 and temporarily brought the economy to its knees, followed closely by Brexit which posed an existential threat to the country’s welfare.

Just as the Brexit issue was sorted, the Covid pandemic swept the globe and, now that it is beginning to recede, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has unleashed a whole new set of problems from soaring inflation, a wave of refugees and the emergence of serious questions about Ireland’s future security.

The notable thing about the Government’s response to all four crises is that the right decisions were generally made. Instead of being overwhelmed as previous administrations were during past global crises when panicked reactions made a bad situation worse, the country has actually emerged stronger from the challenges it has weathered in the past decade.

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The notable thing about the Government's response to all four crises is that the right decisions were generally made

Despite all the trauma of the financial crisis and the indignity of the EU-International Monetary Union bailout, the Fianna Fáil-Green coalition took the right decisions about how to get out from under it. The medicine was deeply unpopular but it worked. The process was continued by the Fine Gael-Labour government from 2011 to 2016, which led the country out of the bailout and back to growth and surging employment.

Prudent management

Brexit threatened to undo all the good work but the steady nerves of Enda Kenny, Leo Varadkar and their key officials ensured that the objective of avoiding a hard border on the island was achieved while the economy continued to grow. Covid-19 arrived hard on the heels of Brexit but, with Micheál Martin at the helm, a careful approach was followed and the restrictions ensured that the death rate here was roughly half that of our nearest neighbours in the UK.

Throughout these crises, a critical factor has been the prudent management of the economy. Credit for that goes to Paschal Donohoe, who has been Minister for Finance since 2017, and also to Michael McGrath who has shared the management of the public finances with him since 2020.

Their economic management has ensured that sufficient resources were in place to enable the Government to respond with an extraordinarily generous package of measures to support people who were out of work during the pandemic. Those measures are now in the final stages and will be wound up in the next two months.

All this brings us to the spike in inflation generated by the war in Ukraine and the calls on the Government from the Opposition and a variety of other sources to spend whatever it takes to cushion the entire population from the impact. While Donohoe and McGrath introduced a modest cost-of-living package earlier this month, they are rightly resisting more extensive intervention. A spending splurge would not only push the public finances back into the red, it would add to inflation and actually make the situation far worse for people in the long term.

Public finances

The media headlines from the quarterly report of the Economic and Social Research Institute earlier in the week focused on the prediction that inflation would go to 8.5 per cent by the middle of the year. What attracted less notice was that the report also showed the public finances would move back into balance and the economy would continue to grow despite the war in Ukraine and the fallout from the pandemic. It forecast a small budget surplus this year and a bigger one in 2023.

While Donohoe and McGrath introduced a modest cost-of-living package earlier this month, they are rightly resisting more extensive intervention

The report was a timely reminder of how important sound economic management is when the clouds darken. The Coalition should have the confidence to continue to make sensible economic choices but it also needs to make the case for them in a far more robust and unapologetic fashion than it has to date.

What is worrying is that instead of getting plaudits from his Fine Gael colleagues for putting the country in a strong position to cope with whatever comes next, Donohoe is criticised for not going on a spending spree in advance of the 2020 general election.

On the Fianna Fáil side of the Coalition, there is a similar level of introspection with TDs fretting about the future, muttering about the leadership and failing to claim any credit from the public for their management of the pandemic. In the face of appalling international events, the country needs reassurance and stability and if the Government doesn’t have the confidence to claim the credit for the things it has done well it will deserve to go down to defeat at the next election.

The Labour Party provides a salutary example of what can happen when a party instead of having pride in its record in office gives voters the impression it is ashamed of what it has done. If the Coalition parties assert themselves and stand up to their critics, they might be surprised at the public response.