Two years ago, before the pandemic changed everything, a figure just below €90bn flowed through Government coffers. Revenues rose by 6.2% to €89.1bn while expenditure grew by 5.0% to €87.6bn. Tremendous as these figures seem, even the €90bn top line, they are just a little more than half the personal wealth attributed to Amazon's Jeff Bezos. It is, of course, comparing apples and oranges to apply the same expectations around financial management to public expenditure where entirely different schemes, influences, and objectives apply. That difference has not, however, stopped those of a particularly crusty worldview regularly suggesting that one captain of industry or other, invariably a strident, uncompromising figure, should be asked to, say, "sort out the health service".

Source: Irish Examiner May 11, 2021 07:52 UTC