Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week

This weeks’s winner is a guest columnist

By the year 2000 Ireland had become the fourth most competitive country in the world. Growing at 11pc, the economy was the most successful in the EU. There was full employment. The budget was in surplus. Public debt, at around 20pc, was, after Luxembourg, the lowest in the EU.

Less than a decade later, Ireland was insolvent and in the hands of the Troika. Competitiveness had plummeted by 35pc, unemployment was growing towards 15pc. The public sector pay bill had become so great and social welfare payments so generous that Ireland became bankrupt and one of the EU’s most indebted countries.

The word ‘banks’ does not appear anywhere in this column. Fantasy stuff.