Monthly Fiscal Projections for 2009

You can find out the projections for monthly spending,  tax revenue and debt servicing for the rest of 2009 from this new release.

Fine Gael Health Plan

Having been critical of Fine Gael’s “stimulus” plan a few weeks ago, I thought I’d be fair and note that FG’s new health plan — with Dutch-style universal private health insurance as its centrepiece — strikes me as a useful contribution.

With increasing funds for the health service simply not possible over the next few years, we need to figure out how to run our health system in a far more efficient way, and this proposal suggests one way of going about this.  Then again, I’m not at all an expert in health economics.  I’d be interested to hear from those who are about what they think of this plan.

Saving for a Rainy Day

Dani Rodrik highlights the success of Chile’s finance minister in preparing for the downturn: you can read it here.

More Detail on the Fiscal Position

The Department of Finance has released some useful documents, explaining in more detail the drivers of the general government balance, with a particular focus on various one-off items:

the explanatory letter is here.

the detailed tables are here.

Public Sector Pay

Ronan Lyons does some analysis of pay levels for teachers here.