Lost in space. The election debate has gone down a rabbit hole, and it remains to be seen if, or when, it will emerge.
We have spent all week arguing about the €10 billion or so of " fiscal space" which the Department of Finance estimates the next government will have.
And precisely zero time discussing the rest of the €300 billion or so that the next government will spend if it lasts five years, and how it will raise roughly the same in taxes to pay for it.
The fiscal space is a valid concept and provides some context for the election budget debate between the different parties. But the context of the debate is all wrong.
The whole basis of the forecasts is that economic growth will continue at a steady pace for the next five years. This may happen, but talk to anyone in business and the markets now and you will feel the nervousness about world economic growth.
There is also Brexit and wider questions facing the European Union, themselves causing huge political strains. No one knows how these will play out.
The momentum in our economy at the moment is considerable – and encouraging. But the priority should be to eliminate borrowing and accelerate the reduction of our debt burden as much as possible in the current extraordinarily favourable set of economic circumstances.
Priorities
It doesn’t mean more austerity. It doesn’t even mean no tax or spending changes. But it is a question of priorities.
There is little point against this background arguing whether there will be €8 billion, €10 billion or €12 billion of fiscal space. Surely it is much more useful to set out what you would do in your first two budgets.
There is a strong case for using the bulk of the early leeway to get the public finances firmly back into safer territory. If growth continues thereafter, then more can be done.
Privately, figures from a number of the bigger political parties will tell you that this will not wash. Their view of what the public wants is more money in their pocket and a clear explanation of how they are going to get it.
And election campaigns are all about giving people what they want.
Sausage
The trouble is this all turns the election into a minimalist debate about using a very small amount of the public resources at our disposal. It is all about the sizzle rather than the sausage. But, of course, as the old saying goes, people buy the sizzle.
I didn't expect Fine Gael to came out so strongly early on with its promise to abolish USC. It doesn't seem to gel with a message of stability and caution even if its long-term economic plan does lay out all the numbers.
But I was even more surprised when Labour and Fianna Fáil followed by promising USC abolition for low and middle earners. So much for differentiating yourself.
But in Irish election politics most of the big players feel the need to match the cards played by others. And so we degenerate into a debate about whose fiscal space figures are correct, and who would do precisely what to USC.
This is accompanied by soundbite economics – Fine Gael with its “long-term economic plan to keep the recovery going” and “making work pay”, Labour with their focus on “ working families” , Sinn Féin with it has been a recovery for the better-off. And so on.
It is low-risk electioneering. The reason everybody focuses on the €10 billion space rather than the €300 billion in spending and tax over the five years is that distributing extra money hurts nobody. It is just a question of who gains.
However, starting to tinker with what we already spend and how we raises taxes to fund it involves reform. And reform is a dirty word because it involves losers as well as winners.
Yet common sense would suggest that we can’t, say, improve health services without reforming how they work, or afford all the new investments we need without considering some ways of users paying for them. Fine Gael hasn’t had a great start in the opinion polls. And you would wonder how its list of giveaways has played with a public still scarred by the downturn.
Interesting recent figures published by the CSO estimated that household disposable income fell by over 16 per cent from its pre-crisis peak to a floor hit in late 2013 and early 2014.
Since then there has been a considerable bounceback, due to increasing employment, rising wages and some budget largesse, but on average household disposable income remains some 5 per cent below pre-crisis levels.
Yet within the average a lot is hidden. There will be those who have more than recouped their loses, and more who have not climbed back much at all.
Some will vote against the Government, no matter what. But are the floating voters more attracted by a promise of more giveaways or a message of stability?
Or is it really possible to mix both messages, decrying “ auction politics” while still offering to abolish USC and spend more on services?
Much of the row in the next three weeks is going to be stuck in the fiscal space. We will spend three weeks arguing about a fraction of the money available to the State in the next five years, which may or may not be available. And even on optimistic assumptions most of it will not appear until after 2019 anyway.
With the world looking rocky, there are surely more important things to be arguing about.