Ireland's economy must hit the floor before it can recover. Booms can only be corrected by busts. Striving to suspend an artificial sky will not succeed. This is stunde null, or zero hour, for Ireland. The clock must start again in the same way it did for Germany in May 1945.

We must confront the reality that almost no property is worth more than €150,000 in Ireland; that almost no public servants can justify a salary greater than, say, €50,000 a year and that almost no public-service pensioners can justify a pension greater than, say, €25,000 a year. No public representative should receive any pension from the public purse. They should fund their own pensions privately.

The public-service unions should retreat gracefully, gradually and cleverly from their expected benefits rather than risk defeat for their members – their employer is as insolvent as any private-sector one. Alas, but were they so wise.

Meanwhile, Enda Kenny is wrong as usual. It doesn't require 10 years to fix the economy. It only requires 10 minutes by following three steps: reduce government, reduce taxes and reduce trade unions. Real resolute recovery would resume very rapidly afterwards.

We can live comfortably on €30bn a year. Our budget was bloated following the abundant years. We spend €1bn a year teaching Irish when banning it would be more effective in reviving it. To expect much of a collective future when we are borrowing €6,000 a second is absolutely delusional. While it appears the IMF/ECB will shortly resolve this conceit for us, as of today we still retain the freedom to rescue ourselves and to create a realistic, worthy and moral future for our young folk.

Eric Plunkett

Managing director,

Redbrucke Limited