Dr. Robert Sweeney:

Despite my criticisms of the fiscal rules, if we look at the actions of governments in Ireland and other member states and the facilitating role the EU authorities played in responding to Covid, we can see that they were positive. We were very expansionary in terms of the supports we gave to households and firms. Whether it will be realised or not, my hope is that, if there was another big downturn on the scale of the Covid pandemic or a financial crisis, even though I would be very surprised if there was another one as damaging as the one we had a decade or so ago, the EU authorities will have learned that they should not press for so much austerity precisely when it is not called for. They do appear to have learned that.