“TOO long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart,” said Michael Noonan, Ireland’s finance minister, quoting Yeats, to justify an easing of austerity measures when he presented his 2014 budget to the Irish parliament on October 15th. This time the government inflicted less fiscal pain than it had originally planned. Austerity fatigue is growing among the public. And relations between the coalition partners, Fine Gael and Labour, are starting to fray. The two parties are keen to avoid any repeat of 1987, when they were also in a coalition and failed to tackle an earlier Irish economic crisis. At that time the government broke up after a disagreement over the budget—and Fianna Fail came back into power.Since 2008, successive Irish governments, in seven budgets, have taken €28 billion ($ 38 billion) out of the economy in spending cuts and tax rises, which amounts to 17% of today’s GDP. Mr Noonan, introducing the latest (eighth) austerity budget, has eased the burden of adjustment marginally, providing some relief to the public while throwing a political lifeline to Fine Gael’s junior partner. He took €600m less than the €3.1 billion in savings…
