NOBEL PRIZE WINNING economist Josph Stiglitz has said that he has been “astonished” by the way the Irish public has accepted the austerity imposed upon it over the past number of years.

Stiglitz, who is in Dublin as a guest of the Clinton Institute in UCD, was speaking today on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland and said that democracy has been a major casualty of austerity policies:

I’ve been impressed at the way the Irish people have accepted the pain, astonished maybe, without protest. There was a loss of democracy, there was a democratic deficit and I would’ve thought the people would have at least expressed disappointment.

The American academic said that leaving the the bailout programme is certainly better than not leaving it but that nobody really thinks that “Ireland is back to robust recovery”.

The lions share of criticism for austerity policies must be directed at Europe he said:

A good share of the blame has to go to the ECB and the European Commission for not restructuring the debts. You had private banks that made bad decisions, the shareholders, the bondholders and those banks have to bear the costs, not the taxpayers.

“Obviously it was also the problem of the Government to accept that burdens for future generations., ” he added.

However, Stilitz said that Ireland’s choices were “drastically reduced” once the country made the choice to stay in the Euro, something he said which was likely the correct option.

Looking towards the future the Columbia University Professor said that Europe and Ireland must accept the fact that we are looking at a lost decade before recovery takes shape:

Will you get back to the growth path you were on? Almost certainly no. Will you get back to where you were with maybe a lost decade or maybe a lost two decades? Then I would say yes you probably will.

Josph Stiglitz said that austerity has been shown historically not to work and implementing such policies after 2008 was a bigger mistake then the choices made before the crash.

Read: ‘Austerity hawks’ want to use Ireland as ‘economic experiment’ – Gilmore

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