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TÁNAISTE EAMON GILMORE has ruled out the prospect of having the government ask the EU-IMF Troika for extra time to meet its budget deficit targets – overruling a junior minister who earlier said a delay might be sought.
RTÉ News has broadcast footage of Gilmore, being interviewed for tonight’s The Week in Politics, where the Tánaiste said he believed the public wanted an end to the series of austerity budgets aimed at bringing Ireland’s deficit under 3 per cent of total economic output.
“We have to get the deficit down, and we have to deal with it,” Gilmore said.
“I actually think that what people want to see – people want to see where is the end of this.”
The Tánaiste bluntly added: “We need to get this over with.”
The original bailout deal agreed with the Troika – which complemented a previous programme agreed with the European Commission, before Ireland entered the bailout – asked Ireland to get its deficit to under 3 per cent of GDP by 2014.
This was renegotiated to 2015 after the current government entered office. In advance of last year’s general election, Labour had argued for the deadline to be extended to 2016.
Earlier today a junior minister from Gilmore’s party had been reported as saying the government would broach the topic of extending the deadline, following the IMF’s slight back-track and admission that austerity programmes hit economies harder than first thought.
Junior trade minister Joe Costello told today’s Sunday Times that the government would seek clarification from the IMF as to whether it now believed trying to reach the 3 per cent mark by 2015 would be detrimental to Ireland’s overall economic state.
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I think you should put IAB into the equation. I don’t recall reading on the Journal about last week’s news of the Belgian data protection supervisory authority (equivalent of the DPC) and their decision. It should be a wake up call. There is significant lobbying giving wrong advice such as allowing ‘legitimate interest’ on cookies. Cookie banner vendors not able to sell compliant products. Also, there is a large amount of personal data collected by google and sent outside the EU on most websites, used for google surveillance for ‘advertising’. A lot of enforcement could be sorted quickly.
AI is where tight regulations need to be implemented. I fear that AI will get so powerful, we will go past the point of rescue if it is not regulated soon.
@James Beattie: skynet
@James Beattie: if the GDPR was enforced, a lot would be covered. At present, before AI kicks in, there is massive amount of data unlawfully collected that no one has the guts to say to FB it should be deleted. Then there is profiling and transparency. Enforcement of these would help significantly.
The push is towards online regulation and silencing anyone that does not stick to the prevailing definition of “Good Information”, some people calling for it genuinely believe it will be a positive outcome, those people lack imagination.
The idea of defining if current technological development is good or bad is pointless, its how its used that defines that in practice, currently how profit driven corporations decide to use the data is the concern, but an AI is likely to make decisions based on criteria than we can’t even imagine, much less control.
Corporations hoping to harness its power to profit, universally lack the humility to realise they can’t control, coerce or contain a true AI, that could become sentient and decide the fate of humanity in a nanosecond.
@David Van-Standen: agree Dave
“The company and its flagship social network have been central to the building of the modern internet” – You are joking, right? Unless to you modern internet is synonymous with social media.
I haven’t used Facebook in nearly a decade, and proud of it!
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