We are giving out pay rises not because productivity is up, but because we have money

Résumé détaillé

Irish public sector expenditure has grown seven-fold in 30 years. The money is not coming from domestic taxpayers, but from foreign multinationals ...

Did your Granny have a “good room”? In west Cork in the late 1970s, my Granny had a good room that was so good, I wasn’t good enough to go into it. In fact, none of my immediate family was. The good room was kept for people who were better than us: the parish priest, the solicitor or the local big Fine Gael farmer. After Mass, Granny would usher these better people into the good room, where my cousins and I lined up to meet them, drinking our MiWadi nervously from swanky Waterford glass goblets, terrified lest we drop a thing, not least our Tee Haitches.

The aim was not to mortify the family. We were insecure about our position and let on to be richer than we were. The really posh people knew we were playing posh, and we knew that they knew we were putting it on, but everyone went along with the drama to avoid embarrassment.

Good rooms are no longer a thing in Ireland, but the insecurity of good-room mentality pervades. These days the good people are no longer parish priests or local, Ford Granada-driving solicitors, but foreign leaders and dignitaries, the type of folk who arrived in Dublin last week. Our governing class still feels insecure alongside these cosmopolitan, multilingual continentals, and the last thing the lads could countenance was a messy public sector strike on the very day the national good room opened to our upscale visitors.

In terms of negotiating, this was the moment of maximum Government fragility and thus a maximum leverage point for the public sector workers. The unions struck a deal on Wednesday, and a truce was announced predawn, fittingly 106 years to the day of the first World War armistice. Face was saved, and the big event could pass off swimmingly – the good room won the day. But what about the economic and fiscal details of the latest deal? Once the black Mercs have swished the foreign grandees back to the airport, we will have to pick over the details to see who is on the hook for what.

The first thing to appreciate is that the Irish…

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