Guest blogger Stephen Kinsella, economist at the University of Limerick, finds there is little substantive difference between the outgoing government party and the incoming parties

Only three months ago the economy was in such a state of collapse that the government had to get the IMF and EU in to bail us out.

So it is surprising there are so few policy alternatives to those of the outgoing government in this general election campaign.

Each political party must be populist of course, and each party must appeal to the individual household's anger at the state of Ireland's economy and society.

But how credible are their policy recommendations on the economy?

We are hearing a lot of rhetoric about funding black holes; low taxes; and a renegotiation of the IMF/EU deal. But when you examine the economic strategies in detail, are there any material differences between Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour and Sinn Féin?

Do they differ in their attitudes towards the EU/IMF loan announced before Christmas? Or their attitudes toward Ireland's fiscal stance Or, perhaps more importantly, toward political reform?

The context for the parties' policies is the stark difference between taxation revenues and government expenditure, shown in the graph below as percentages of overall economic output, gross domestic product.

The difference between those two lines must be made up by a combination of borrowing, expenditure reduction and taxation increases. Ireland has committed, rather incredibly, as I've argued here in previous posts, to getting these two lines to almost meet by 2014.

Each party contesting the election has a prescription for their preferences on closing that yawning gap. I've tried to understand the differences in each party's position as stated in their policy documents and manifestos by placing them on various axes in the graph below.

These are necessarily broad brush, but remember that, apart from Fianna Fáil, these policies represent largely uncosted aspirations, instead of credible policy platforms. The only reason Fianna Fáil's policies are costed properly is because they had a civil service to do it for them. The opposition parties do not have officials from the department of finance working for them.

The positions of each party speak largely for themselves, but there's one important takeaway - nothing has changed.

All three major parties are, to a greater or lesser extent, focused on austerity measures to narrow the gap shown in the first chart.



A scattergram of the policies shows how close the three main parties are in policy

Each party's manifesto is full of waffle about job creation, helping the poor via a smart economy of excellent excellence, and so forth, while talking tough about establishing budget certainty.

Overall, it's clear from reading the economic strategies of the various parties on their budgetary strategies that the public is not being offered a serious choice between credible alternatives when it comes to fiscal policy.

In some ways, this election is a referendum on the EU/IMF loan package, but, beyond mouthing the usual election platitudes, no party wants to confront the real elephant in the room: public sector pay and pensions.