One way of assessing what impact the Budget announced last Wednesday might have on the country is to look back and see what last year’s budget had. Last year, the Minister for Finance said: “The core [mission] of this Government is to get Ireland working

WE ARE all familiar with the concept of the people becoming exasperated with their government. We have seen it happen here and even more dramatically across Europe. The government gets it wrong, causes hardship for its people and they in turn lose faith and confidence

There is a form of deductive reasoning called a syllogism. In essence, it consists of deriving a conclusion from two related statements of fact. A classic example is: all mammals are warm-blooded. All dogs are mammals, therefore all dogs are warm- blooded. But there are

If there was a prize for hardest working part of government it would undoubtedly go the Taoiseach’s image-makers. Their most recent achievements have been impressive: Enda’s face on the cover of the European edition of Time magazine and his naming as European of the Year

‘IN this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” So said the American founding father, Benjamin Franklin. Clearly he reckoned without the members of this Government. With the Budget barely two months away we are seeing another absolute certainty in

Some months ago here I outlined how ministers in this Government can be divided into three distinct categories: the high=flyers, the passengers and the weak links. Leaving aside the temptation to label them all as passengers following their mass exodus to Brussels, the events of