Gaping hole emerges in Exchequer returns!

[The Analyser]

Could the changes in tax rate/bands/personal allowances not contribute to this as per last budget??

It's not the only aspect of govt economic policy we need to worry about though is it? With "falling" house prices, stamp duty and vat are bound to be hit in coming months. Could this slow down come to a sudden stop just ahead of polling day?

If FG are lucky .. worst case scenario for FG, is winning an election, and having all this fall into your lap late in the year .. you'll be blamed for killing the Celtic Tiger, and will never be elected again

I can see that happening a mile away. FG will get into a government and day later the economy will collapse, we wouldn't have even done anything yet and we'll be blamed. It basically happened to use in the early 80's and knowing our luck it will happen again. And as you said it would probably be the end of us.

Don't forget that the oil crisis hit the National Coalition in the 1970s. It seems to be FG and Labour's luck. In 1973 they entered into government. Then the oil prices hit and they had to cut back. In 1981 they entered government and found that Haughey's government had been cooking the books and had spent most of the year's money in the first six months to try to buy the election. Bruton had to introduce an emergency budget or there would have been no money to pay anything.

So I guess if the economy is hitting rough waters that means that FG and Labour are due back in government, just at the wrong time, as usual. Talk about bad luck. They don't seem very lucky, do they?

[Clon]

The current Live register figures are herehttp://www.cso.ie/releasespublicatio...rrent/lreg.pdf

They show that 1,000 less were on the dole this January when seasonally adjusted compared to January '06. The latest figures for employment from the CSO show an increase year on year to the end of the third quarter in employment of 80,000 approx., and I have read no where from any economists of a slowdown in the trend of high net job growth since then.

For now I would take the figures as a blip, umpteen reasons could be thought up to excuse the figure or to try and use it as proof of the economy floundering depending on your outlook and political background, but for now not much can be read into it. If Corp. Tax and VAT etc. were well ahead of schedule then that could also be seen as proof that a lot of money is being made in the private sector still. The Dept. of Finance are fairly notorious for being bad at predicting revenue figures, normally on the conservative side, but also sometimes on the wrong side.