A small deficit is no great boast

I’ve become something of a Newstalk 106 FM fan.  Eamonn Dunphy’s programme continues to feature sufficiently interesting guests to allow me to tolerate his verbal diarrhoea.  I think George Hook’s programme is consistently brilliant – again despite (or is it because) of a less than word/thought-perfect host.  Listening to the lads chewing the cud on “Off the Ball” is like eavesdropping on two auld fellas in a bar in Tipperary. And there is nothing wrong with that.  I’ve even found my interest in things sporting has grown considerably – albeit from a rather low base.  It’s all a refreshing change from Moaning Ireland and the need to turn every interview into a major confrontation.

I had occasion to be headphone-ed uninterrupted for a large part of this morning and so was happy to indulge my Newstalk fix.  One topic of conversation was the “huge, unexpected budget surplus” that Minister Cowan has finished 2005 with.  The business news piece on this was nothing more than a playing to the galleries piece which could be summed up by their advice – to “Cut taxes including stealth one, so that we don’t end up with such an embarrassing surplus”.  One of Dunphy’s guests did point out that in fact there wasn’t a surplus just less of a deficit, but this didn’t stop Eamo repeating the misinformation three times in the same interview.  When Orla Barry opened her show with a mini-rant about this huge surplus, and how could CIE fare increases be justified in light of this, I knew it was time to switch off before I got really annoyed.

Now I’m no Economist and God knows I regularly make a haimes of my personal finances.  But even I know that if you are going to run budget deficits in “bad times” then you are going to need to run surpluses “in good times”.  I’ve no doubt that this Government are orchestrating a brilliant election year windfall for Joe Public.  And I feel that they should be held to account.  But could someone not ask why after 10 years of sustained Celtic Tiger performance we still haven’t run a budget surplus?  Why we’ve allowed the state of our public finances to be determined by something beyond Government control – consumer confidence?  When do we think we should start paying off Ireland Inc’s massive credit card bill?

I’d be happy to applaud Government sometimes for not throwing more money at problems.  Instead we criticise them not for being profligate but rather for not being sufficiently profligate.  It’s brilliant stuff this tabloid reportage!