Sir, - James Wrynn's argument (Opinion, November 23rd) that Ireland's Celtic Tiger economy needs better physical and social infrastructure is readily acceptable to most people. It has certainly been accepted by the present Minister for Finance, who recently announced that public capital spending in 1999 will be 58 per cent ahead of 1997 levels. What is not acceptable is Mr Wrynn's suggestion that because Irish Government expenditure is a low 34 per cent of GDP that there is huge scope for additional public expenditure. Irish economists did not fight long and hard through the 1980s to convince the general public of the perverse effects on the economy of massive increases in public current expenditure initiated by domestic politicians to now recommend similar policies at the urging of foreign politicians such as Oskar Lafontaine.
Had Mr Wrynn used GNP rather than GDP as an appropriate measure of available national income, Irish public expenditure would amount to 40 per cent of GNP in 1998. Further, as Colm McCarthy showed last October, if adjustments were made for countries' differing treatment of social insurance contributions, the Irish Government's share of national income would rise towards the average EU level. Instead of resurrecting failed statist policies of the past, serious consideration should be given to redeploying and making more effective a whole range of current public expenditure programmes. - Yours, etc., Felim O'Rourke,
Institute of Technology, Sligo, Ballinode, Sligo.