The economy is emerging from the Covid-19 crisis with historic savings levels, damaged private and public sector balance sheets, and a key policy problem for the Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe: when to taper the support to households and firms once a sufficient proportion of the population has been vaccinated. Taper too fast, you destroy livelihoods that otherwise would have survived with a little more of the state’s largesse. Taper too slowly, and you create the conditions for zombie firms, or even zombie sectors in the economy, addicted to subsidies and unable to exist without them.  While zombie firms are a…

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