Much has been made of the announcement yesterday by the Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls MP that a Labour government would reintroduce a 50% tax on incomes over £150,000. The motivation of this policy is to reduce the deficit, and taxing higher incomes is clearly far preferable than withdrawing even more...

As memories of the Troika in Ireland recede and as the narrative has been truly set we should pause and ask some hard questions. In a recent article entitle Ireland: The Best Behaved Pupil? on the Policy Network website (State of the Left) I have argued that 'the great irony of recent months is that...

The latest NERI seminar took place this afternoon in the INTO Learning Centre. Seán Ó Riain discussed the place of enterprise policy in Ireland's economic recovery. Seán is a professor of sociology at the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis . Prof. Riain's current research is on the...

A recent report from the European Commission (DG TAXUD) offers some interesting insights into the Republic of Ireland’s VAT system and the amount of VAT collected. The report, which examined the VAT systems across EU member states, sets out to estimate the ‘VAT gap’ a measure of the difference...

The latest NERI seminar took place this afternoon in the INTO Learning Centre. Seán Ó Riain discussed the place of enterprise policy in Ireland's economic recovery. Seán is a professor of sociology at the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis . Prof. Riain's current research is on the...

In the second half of 2013 there were 28.5 people available for work for each vacancy. Though there are some shortages for specific skills (Forfás has recently released a report on the issue), the main cause of unemployment is not a lack of people willing to work, but simply a lack of jobs. In...

Environmental change has attracted growing concern over recent decades. The recent recession in most European states has diverted attention, temporarily to problems of debt, low-growth and under-utilisation of resources such as labour. Yet, the natural environment plays a huge role in shaping the...

Recent publications from the NERI have contributed towards a more detailed understanding of the nature of the Republic of Ireland’s income and earnings distribution – a key context for the formation of public policy. See here and here and here. Dealing only with taxable income, data from the Revenue...

In Northern Ireland – as in the rest of the United Kingdom – real wages have been falling since 2008. Using data from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) the UK-based GMB trade union has estimated that average earnings in Northern Ireland , when adjusted for inflation, have fallen by 12%...

What is a 'living wage'? How do we measure it? And how could it be brought about for everyone at work? You have guessed - these are no simple answers to these questions. Research by NERI does throw some light on these questions and it is hoped to undertake additional research into these matters in...