Pearse Doherty joined Sinn Féin’s front bench as finance spokesperson after his first election to the Dáil in 2010. He remembers taking up the position during the week the IMF came to bail out Ireland, days before the late minister for finance, Brian Lenihan, introduced sweeping cuts in that year’s budget. Asked to place last week’s budget in the context of the past 15 years, Doherty says the impact of that period continues to this day. “You had the wrong decisions, in my view, at that time, where the State wasn’t supported and, therefore, we had a recession that was…

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