We have just completed a series of six meetings in the major cities, plus Athlone for the Midlands. It gave us the opportunity to meet close to 1,500 business people. The message that was coming back was very clear. Businesses in many sectors are struggling to hold on. Some are hanging on by their finger nails, beset by the problems of credit shortage, of the value of sterling, of high costs. They need a break if jobs are to be saved. Continue Reading

The publishers are no doubt delighted with the war of words between David McWilliams and Minister Brian Lenihan. It rose from the somewhat charming picture painted in the book of an exhausted Minister for Finance battling to rise above the puny ideas of his bewildered mandarins. Armed only with a clove of raw garlic and a copy of Alan Greenspan’s biography, the Minister is portrayed as all at sea when he arrived on the McWilliams doorstep in September 2008. Continue Reading

People are only gradually beginning to understand the sheer scale of the public finance problem that has been created. We are borrowing €63m every day of the week, including Sundays. Apart from borrowing for investment, almost 30% of our day-to-day spending is now funded on tick. You don’t need to be MiCawber to know that this can’t go on. We need rationalisation in the way we deliver public services if we are to protect the frontline. If we can’t strip back on bureaucracy, we will be faced with the usual choice of deep cuts in entitlements or huge hikes in taxation. Continue Reading