Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

I have just one general remark, which is not meant to be personally offensive to any of the witnesses. I have a real problem with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, or IFAC, in the sense that its role and the way in which it has been set up is part of the deliberate technocratisation of decision-making. It is making economics not something that is political, but the idea that there is a right and wrong to it, whereas I think it is a matter for political debate. Different economists have different views.

IFAC's pre-budget submission was honest and brutal in its assessment of the strategy of the establishment, the capitalist class in this country, and others. It said that maintaining the fiscal discipline required to achieve large primary budget surpluses will become politically harder following a long period of fiscal consolidation and as crisis memories fade. In particular, IFAC mentioned that those groups affected by austerity are against it. Is that not an example of what Naomi Klein calls the shock doctrine, using the shock of a crisis to try to enforce pre-existing neoliberal, ideological and actual economic and structural change to economies? Are the witnesses explicitly saying that memories of the crisis will be used to try to drive through change?

What about the idea that IFAC is really independent?

Although I do not doubt the personal integrity of the council members, their economic beliefs all come from a certain school of thought, even though there might be slight differences in their thinking. In what sense are they really independent? They are appointed by the Government, although the Government might not listen to them. Why should they be in a position to say what is right and wrong?