One of the lessons of the recent economic collapse (I hope!) has been the importance of a stable tax base. Total stability is impossible for a small open economy like Ireland; we will always have swings in economic performance which will alter the volume of economic transactions and tax revenues...

The gap between what the Government in Ireland takes in and what it spends is running at a rate of €1 billion every month. Clearly this is not sustainable in the long-run because it adds to the total amount of debt owed by citizens year after year. The total amount of debt owed by the Government on...

Comparing wages of public sector workers across countries poses many difficulties. Nevertheless the OECD publishes some useful information. In 2009 public sector clerical workers were paid below the OECD average. This is the latest available data (more timely data should be available in June). The...

16% of the Irish population lives on an income which is less than the official poverty line - about €210 per adult per week. Given a population of approximately 4.58 million people this implies that almost 730,000 live at risk of poverty. In the latest edition of the NERI's Quarterly Economic Facts...

Five years into Ireland's unemployment crisis the nature of our policy response has been slow. In general attention has been focused on employment creation, a worthy and necessary goal, but with limited attention on the nature of the unemployment crisis and the likely long-term impediments to...

Public debate about matters of public concern in Ireland has been characterised in a number of ways. I suggest that the following traits may be stronger than elsewhere in the world and could reflect deep and enduring historical factors: There is a disproportionate emphasis on 'survival' with the...

Pensions and pension's policy are back on the agenda following the recent release of the OECD report on the Irish pensions system. Details and the document are here: http://www.welfare.ie/en/pressoffice/Pages/pr220413.aspx At the core of much discussion on pension issues is the question of what is...