NESC report on euro

Nemi

I haven't seen any thread on today's NESC report on our experience of the euro Please do merge or move this thread elsewhere, if necessary.

I'm less interested in the strict economic argument, i.e. whether a reason that the property bubble got so out of hand was eurozone membership making cheap credit too easy. I'm more interested in the way that NESC seem to be pretty much giving up on the idea that the domestic political system would be capable of mediating and creating any coherent independent strategy. And its hard to argue with that view. The fact is that we, collectively, didn't impose an effective fiscal limit on ourselves.

So NESC may be right to advocate passively accepting fiscal monitoring from Brussels. I just wonder if they are doing enough to highlight the implications of that, what it means for our ability to act locally. Or, possibly, they are well aware of the consequences of what they advocate, but just don't want to discuss them in front of the children.

Any thoughts?

SkepticOne

I think Brussels should have the right to comment publically on the Irish budget proposal but it should be done in public and after it has been presented to the Dail.

At least with the likes of the Stability and Growth pact, flawed though it was, there was a measure of transparency which the current idea lacks.

View

I am not sure where you got the idea that the NESC is advocating "passively accepting fiscal monitoring from Brussels". I seem to remember they had a comment that proposals concerned were presented without comment. As such, I read it as a summary of various proposals being discussed.

That said it should be remembered that proposals are easy to make. I once looked at the proposals concerning the Commission President from the European Convention - there were almost 70 of them if I recall correctly. They literally covered everything from abolishing the office to US style presidential elections and everything in between.

I would personally regard it as being the role of democratically elected politicians to debate the merits, or lack thereof, of the various proposals in due course, rather than that of the NESC.