Author: Stephen Kinsella

Worth a read by readers of this blog (.pdf).

Key lessons:

Budget oversight by the Irish parliamentary chambers is under-developed by international standards.

Reforms mooted include:

• Ex ante parliamentary input to medium-term fiscal planning;
• Ex ante parliamentary input on budget priorities;
• Early publication of full budgetary information and legislative proposals;
• Timely consideration of the Estimates of Expenditure;
• Performance Dialogue with joint committees in early year;
• Re-introduce “Pre-Budget Estimates” showing “no policy change” expenditure baselines;
• Establish an Irish Parliamentary Budget Office to support parliamentary engagement and budget scrutiny;
• Continuing Professional Development of parliamentarians and officials;
• “Performance hearings” with joint committees in early part of the year (February-March);
• Power for joint committees to recommend changes to performance information;
• Systematic review of existing performance metrics;
• Estimates Performance Reports;
• Promotion of IrelandStat as an authoritative portal for public performance;
• Linkages to higher level strategies and articulation of a “National Performance Framework”;
• Establishment of a “National Performance Quality Panel”;
• Role for Irish Parliamentary Budget Office in supporting performance scrutiny;
• Selective Audit of Performance Information by the Office of the Comptroller & Auditor General in reports to the Public Accounts Committee and other committees.

Well worth going through this, it is a wealth of constructive suggestions.

The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council has a vacancy for an economist, details are here. Closing date is the 16th of September.

The Greek Finance Minister appeals directly to Ireland in the IT here, while on Medium, Karl Whelan puts the blame for the calamitous situation on the official response of the Troika in 2010.

A serious question we do need to answer: are bank runs, or the potential for bank runs, becoming the ultimate backstop in a currency union comprised of creditor and debtor nations?

In the end the Oireachtas banking inquiry is unearthing the powerful narrative threat of the ‘ATMs running dry’ as driving much of the decision to deliver the 2008 guarantee, Cyprus had a bank run precipitate its crisis, at least partially. Iceland had the same experience, and we all know what is happening to Greek deposits right now, ELA or not.

Dr William Behan, co-author of “Does Eliminating Fees at Point of Access Affect Irish General Practice Attendance Rates in the Under 6 Years Old Population? A Cross Sectional Study at Six General Practices”

You can download a .pdf of this blog post with references here. 

Most of the state sponsored; CSO or university department generated statistics on general practice utilisation since 2001 have been based on surveys employing 1 year recollection. Dr. Denny uses Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) the largest database available for the purpose of determining the marginal effect of granting private under 6s patients medical cards. Intuitively this makes sense……or does it when the potential biases of that particular survey data are explored?

We really have to examine biases in statistics collection to determine what is more likely.