The suspension of belief is commonly needed for science fiction. Most space dramas require alien races to speak English or the existence of some form of instantaneous universal translator. It now seems that something similar is required when moving in fiscal space. Fiscal space is the money available for new measures while achieving minimum compliance with the rules. Lots of words are being used to describe this but can we tell what they actually mean?

On Monday, the European Commission issued their Country-Specific Recommendations as part of the European Semester. Here are some extracts from Ireland’s CSRs covering fiscal outcomes: