This path, difficult as it may be, is the surest route to supporting the recovery in confidence in the Irish economy both domestically and internationally. The budgetary arithmetic is so far broadly on track and in this context I’d like to emphasise how important it is to interpret correctly the overall government borrowing figures as they are published.
In addition to the normal government borrowing requirement, these figures now include the additional net costs of financial restructuring of the banks. The € billion injected in 2009 into Anglo Irish Bank already lifted the general government deficit from 11.7% to 14.3% of GDP.