'If I was in the shoes of outgoing government, I would be nervous as they are ignoring elephant in the room'
Both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael are promising the sun, moon and stars with promises of tax cuts, social welfare increases and childcare packages to get back into office
We are halfway through this election campaign and so far the public are not engaged.
I don't know whether it is good or bad news for the outgoing Government but if I was in their shoes I would be nervous.
Both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael are promising the sun, moon and stars with promises of tax cuts, social welfare increases and childcare packages to get back into office.
The bill in terms of public spending will be a staggering €50bn to €60bn and yet they are not telling us truthfully how they are going to pay for it.
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They are completely ignoring the elephant in the room - the Trump effect following his re-election.
This means in a nutshell a trade war and an American crackdown on US multinational companies operating overseas and paying their taxes here.
The risk is that the budget surpluses we currently enjoy paid for by lavish corporation tax receipts could vanish overnight, leaving a huge black hole in our economy.
The politicians don't want to talk about it because the idea of returning to 2008-2011 when the economy collapsed will absolutely terrify voters.
Those who lost everything from their jobs to their homes and eventually came through those terrible hard times do not want to see the same mistakes repeated again.
But yet if you look at the party leaders from Simon Harris to Micheal Martin and Mary Lou McDonald on the campaign trail, this is exactly what is happening.
They all want to spend money like there is no tomorrow and won't say what they will do if corporation taxes collapse.
Very few people I speak to so far are talking about the general election. I don't know whether they are bored, are doing OK financially and aren't worried about their future, or are just not interested.
Two very clear issues come up every time with those who are engaged - the cost of living and how prices keep increasing and the cost of housing.
There is no doubt that thousands of new homes are being built all over the country. But they keep increasing in price and, secondly, the demand still outstrips supply.
We are currently building over 30,000 new homes a year which in itself is an achievement but the experts say we need 50,000 as the population continues to grow.
Rising prices and inflation still upsets many voters and despite intense competition between the supermarket chains, food prices have risen sharply in recent years.
They are not as bad as America but have been going up. It is also far more expensive to socialise so many people prefer to entertain at home rather than going out to pubs and restaurants and paying for taxis and babysitters.
It is cheaper for them to sit in and invite friends over for dinner or drinks.
The other big cost is electricity, which has soared in cost over the past few years and the Government and specifically the Greens have done little or nothing to rein in the fat-cat bosses at the state owned ESB who are ripping off the people left, right and centre.
The Greens failed dismally to deliver national energy security for the country and many of the proposed offshore wind farms that were to replace fossil fuels never got off the ground.
They want us all to drive electric cars when they also failed to deliver adequate re-charging points all over the nation.
The two things they delivered while in Government were better public transport at far cheaper prices and wonderful greenways all over Ireland.
The amount of carbon taxes brought in was insane and all they did was put extra costs on consumers.
I can tell you here and now that the Greens are going to have a very bad election and that the public are waiting in the wings to get their own back on them.
We may be in the middle of a climate crisis but voters are sick to the teeth of arrogant lecturing from the Greens when in four and a half years in power they could not deliver clean energy nationally.
This country has enough wind off the Atlantic to power the whole of Europe yet for all their talk and waffle they couldn't deliver one offshore wind project to their eternal shame.
We are still as dependent on gas from abroad for much of our power which is disgraceful.
The cost of electricity is killing many small businesses and families who can't afford it and will come back to haunt us yet.
The one thing we should expect from our politicians is some honesty. We don't want to go back to the past when Ireland was on the verge of bankruptcy. We never want to see those dark days again.
A Trump White House and its desire to bring American companies home is a real threat to our business model.
We need, as a nation, to be able to live within our means and so each and every political party has a national duty to act responsibly and not to be constantly giving away every penny just because there is a few quid in the bank.
We all want to help working families but it should be at one step at a time.
There are now 10 days to go to polling day and it will be fascinating to see how the people vote. I predict plenty of surprises and the big parties will not get it all their own way. The opinion polls may not be as accurate as the experts think.
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