The world is changing and Ireland’s industrial and enterprise strategies will have to evolve if we wish to thrive in this new reality. One constructive step that the Irish government can take is to renew its focus on innovation policy with a view to building a world class National System of...

Posted on January 22, 2017 by Tom Healy A saying from Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde has sometimes been applied to economists. It runs as follows: ‘A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.’ Now, the context for the quotation is a question posed by a Cecil Graham: ‘What...

It is now generally accepted that the Republic of Ireland has a ‘housing crisis’. Though the causes are many and interlinked it would be astonishing to deny the obvious: not enough houses have been built in recent times at the right price in the right places for the right people. Result: escalating...

By now many a new year resolution has been ‘postponed’ until the days get a little longer! What immediate challenges arise for workers in Ireland in 2017? These are about the staple bread and butter issues of (i) Wages, (ii) Jobs .......and not forgetting pensions! Wages Wages have been remarkably...

2017 promises to be a year of change with Brexit and Trumponomics gathering pace with diffcult to predict outcomes. One thing remaining constant is that the fiscal space available for Budget 2018 will remain tight and that discretion for current and capital spending increases and tax cuts will be...

In Northern Ireland’s new draft Programme for Government (2016-2021) ‘wellbeing’ is embedded as the central concept on which the Executive seeks to base its new approach to governance. On the first line of the introduction to the draft document it is said that the ‘ Programme for Government is...