Reading between the lines to get a fix on EuropeÕs view of our economic recovery

It's Monday night and the temperature outside in the big bad city is dipping down below zero. It's bitterly cold and sleet is falling. Nobody is going out.

But hark, is that not your political commentator putting on his anorak? Is he going out into that indescribably awful weather, to face the elements and the dangers on behalf of you dear reader? Yep, he's zipping it up, throwing up the hood, God he looks determined.

But wait! Why is he still wearing his slippers? And why is he going into the kitchen and putting on his glasses and blowing the dust of that report?

Our hearts sink. He's not wearing an anorak. It's worse than that. He is an anorak and now he's going to bore the bejaysus out of us with some indescribably boring report, all in the name of educating and informing us about the world of Irish politics.

Sadly, the anorak's offering this week is a report, a technical report that doesn't exactly make for the most exciting reading. It's the report written by staff from the European Commission following the last quarterly assessment of Ireland's performance under the bailout programme.

As a matter of fact, if you read it – and kind of gloss over some of the more technical bank stuff – it's not all that gratingly bad as a read. Like all of these documents the criticisms are couched but when you get the gist of the argot, you quickly realise that there are quite a few salient and uncomfortable home truths for the Government and for the country.

You see, the headline every at the time of every review is that Ireland had succeeded in meeting all its targets and that the country is a poster boy for a country that's in a bailout doing everything possible to get back into the good books.

That is true to an extent. But the actual targets that have been set for Ireland aren't quite as onerous as the ones facing other countries. And on top of that there are a couple of underlying problems and issues that haven't really been addressed so far.

When you read the report in its entirety, you get a sense that until now that Ireland has been on an interest only mortgage deal to date but that slightly easier repayment plan, that's about to come to an end and the real pain is about to start.

So here are some of the things that the European Commission is worried about.

For one, it says that labour market growth, if any will be weak. Recent data has suggested that previous projections made by the Government were "somewhat optimistic" as to when employment would start growing again. The Government has put huge emphasis on jobs with action plans and stimulus programmes but this report is saying the outlook is uncertain.

The ratio of household debt to disposable income is still 200 per cent which is twice the EU average. And the efforts to stimulate consumption in the economy have not been helped by precautionary savings by the very young and the very old.

It also says that the projections of the Department of Finance for real Gross Domestic Product Growth envisages €1.5bn more in growth by 2015 than the Commission estimates.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.