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WHEN THE National Development Plan (NDP) was launched in January 2007, full implementation was predicated on an annual average growth rate of 4 per cent over a seven-year period to 2013. That is no longer achievable given the global financial and economic crisis and the perilous state of the public finances.

The Irish economy contracted by an estimated 2 per cent last year and will decline by 5 per cent or more in 2009. No one did – and perhaps no one could – predict the speed or the severity of a downturn that has left the Government struggling to raise some €4 billion in next month’s supplementary budget to keep borrowing below 10 per cent of GDP in 2009.