THE MAN who headed the Department of Finance during the banking crisis has described Ireland’s fiscal adjustment as “essential but very painful”.
In his first interview as a member of the European Court of Auditors, Kevin Cardiff says the “rebalancing” of economists’ and markets’ opinion about Ireland is the result of “concerted and determined efforts over a long period of time”.
These efforts have come at the cost of taxpayers and citizens, who have to manage with fewer services or with less pay and higher taxes, he acknowledges.
Mr Cardiff wasn’t asked in the interview, in an in-house European Commission journal, about the controversy surrounding his appointment to the Luxembourg-based court. The European Parliament’s budgetary control committee voted against his appointment last year after hearing criticisms from MEPs, including Irish members, of his role in the Irish banking crisis.
Labour MEP Nessa Childers accused the Government of trying to get rid of Mr Cardiff, who was secretary general of the department at the time of the bank guarantee. However, the parliament overturned the committee’s decision after a rearguard action by the political groups to which Fine Gael and Labour are attached and Mr Cardiff started in the €276,000-a-year post in March.
Asked about the current economic financial situation, he says Ireland is a country “in a sort of transition”.
The markets now see that Ireland’s commitment to its own reform is “actually enormous” and our ability to direct administrative and political system “impressive”.
“In the perception of the markets, Ireland has appeared to create an identity of its own and there is a real potential there for Ireland to access market funding in its own right and not rely purely on the EU and IMF programme support.”
In his new post he aims to address the areas of risk and interest for Europe: “By interest I mean Europe’s policy interests, not just those things that are interesting in a gossip sense.”
Asked whether the court should align itself more closely with the parliament or the commission, he replies: “The court stands as an institution itself, so it is not a question of whether it becomes like the Guelphs and the Ghibellines in Renaissance Italy, attaching itself to one party or another.”
