I have written many pieces over the years about the advice the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (Ifac) is giving to the government of the day and how ministers should pay more heed to it. There doesn’t seem much point in doing it again.

Irish politics – on the Government and Opposition benches – is driven by a debate about how the available money should be spent, rather than the risks of relying on a potentially risky flow of taxes.

Was anyone listening to Ifac’s latest warning about the reliance on corporate tax and the likely need to borrow money to invest in State funds, I asked one public servant this week. The – not entirely serious – reply was to ask whether I was referring to the Irish Farm Accounts Co-Operative, which advises farmers on their finances and shares the same initials. The political reality is that despite Ifac’s decade-long warnings, corporate tax has risen from €7 billion in 2016 to and estimated €34 billion his year – and the debate now is on how to spend it.

The risk is being the one holding the ball when the public finances do hit trouble or – worse – when the clean-up is being done. The Fianna Fáil-led government took a hit from announcing the bank bailout in 2008, and the Progressive Democrats, already in decline, never reappeared. Fine Gael and particularly Labour paid a heavy political price for the resulting cutbacks after they came to power in 2011.

‘Nothing works’: Russians react as intelligence services shut down the internet

Thousands of vulnerable children’s records ‘may be destroyed’ in coming weeks

We went on RTÉ’s Cheap European Homes and ended up buying our dream house in France

Ciara Mageean: ‘I probably won’t make my 40th birthday. That’s rough’

The fallout from this led to tight control on spending in the early years of the........

© The Irish Times