NAMA & the budget deficit - we don't need that crap.

I’m not sure what, if anything, the broadcast today of Pat Kenny’s radio programme from O’Connell St added to the debate on the state of the nation. It might well be perceived that staging the programme in this way was, in itself, an act of solidarity with the trade union organised protest.

However, one contributor (Kieran Allen) was allowed to make the misleading claim, oft repeated by left-wing commentators, union reps and opposition politicians, that the €54bn (estimated) bill for NAMA is somehow tied into the yawning annual budget deficit.

This claim is generally allowed go unchallenged by programme presenters, as it was today by Pat Kenny.

However, on Kenny’s own Frontline tv programme some weeks back, Colm McCarthy made it forcibly clear that this claim is nonsense. The fact that it’s routinely made by economists and opposition politicians – who must know that it’s a lie – makes it all the more important that it is scotched immediately every time it is uttered.

To paraphrase a well-known media figure (Pat Kenny) – we don’t need that kind of crap.