Professor Christian Kastrop, a former aide for Germany’s former Federal Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble has said that Ireland was hit with unnecessarily hard austerity a decade ago.

In comments that will prick up Irish ears, he says that we were caught in the crossfire of a European crisis.

Fergal O’Brien is IBEC’s Director of Policy and Public Affairs, and he explains to Ivan why austerity was necessary to get Ireland out of the financial hole it was in, but should it happen again, things would be done a lot differently.