Category: Political economy

Reforming Ireland’s Budgetary Cycle

Via Commenter @DOCM:

The final report of the Oireachtas sub-committe on reform is now available here.

It represents a major, even historical, change, including the introduction by 2017 of an IPBO, which we discussed here.

There remain, however, a number of major ambiguities e.g. no definition of the “budgetary cycle”, lack of clarity in the role of the Budget Oversight Committee (BOC) and its relations ship with the the sectoral committee “shadowing” Finance, PER and the Taoiseach’s department and, in particular, the other sectoral committees (page 9) “Committee also to consider option where Departmental Estimates would be considered by sectoral committees which would make their views known to Budget Oversight Committee for its consideration of aggregate position.”

In short, plenty on the form but very little in the matter of the substance of the involvement of the Dáil in deciding the levels and allocation of expenditure and taxation. It seems. however, that the split between PER and Finance will be between these two issues cf. the remarks by the Minister of Finance:

“The Spring Economic Statement will become a summer statement and it should be ready by June. There will be a full debate in the House. I am providing all the text papers to the finance committee so that there will be a full debate on taxation at that point, in advance of the budget.”

The Davos Lie

Larry Summers coined the phrase “The Davos Lie” back in 2007; my latest column in Critical Quarterly covers some of what I’ve written on the subject over the years. Here is another recent piece on the subject.

Update: a glitch having been sorted out, the CQ column is now freely available.

Broad tax bases are desirable

I notice that there is no election thread, which makes sense given that we were probably all fed up with the campaign before it even began. And I’ve nothing original to say on the subject either. But there probably should be an election thread, and if there is to be one, someone has to kick it off by saying something. So, in that spirit: do we all agree that (a) the Irish economy is now recovering, and doesn’t need further stimulus right now; (b) that the Irish economy has proved itself over previous decades to be unusually volatile; (c) that the international outlook right now suggests that there are risks on the horizon; (d) that the Eurozone is a very dangerous place to be anyway, if you are a small country; (e) that broad tax bases are preferable to narrow tax bases; and (f) that given all of the above, arguing for the abolition of the USC or water charges (water charges, as opposed to Irish Water) is grossly irresponsible, and should suffice to disqualify a party from being taken seriously as a “safe pair of hands”?

Noel Whelan: election campaign should focus on micro, not macro

Here.

The political aftermath of financial crises.

Here.