Sticking with the subject of inflation, an issue on which everyone in the State now seems to have a strongly-held opinion, calls by the Minister for Finance for responsible behaviour ring hollow.
This is the Minister whose last Budget is responsible for the lion's share of the domestically generated element of the current rise in inflation. Now the Government is in danger of losing a pay agreement offering rates of pay increases which would have seemed ludicrously high only a couple of years ago, as people look to keep their real pay level ahead of inflation.
This week Mr McCreevy was reduced to pleading with the banks to freeze their charges and, if possible lend less money to a credit-hungry population. No-one denies that the current level of borrowing risks storing up huge problems ahead but the rate of credit growth has been a worry for at least two years now. During that time, the Minister among others chose to ignore countless warnings from the Central Bank.
At the same time, the State itself is fuelling the wage price spiral by failing to put in place effective policies to address the labour shortage - in part because of a collective political failure to comprehensively address the issue of immigration.
If the Minister is going to undergo a Pauline conversion, one would hope it would be more all-encompassing.
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