Household Income Distribution in the Republic of Ireland
Understanding the nature, shape and composition of the income distribution is an important component of our understanding of society and the appropriateness of various policy options. In the context of considerations of policy changes (to taxes, welfare payments or public services) or changes to...
50p tax rate would affect less than 2000 earners in Northern Ireland
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...
Monday Blog: The best behaved pupil?
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...
Ireland’s VAT Gap – a missing billion?
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...
Earnings in the Republic of Ireland – the four quarters
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...
Monday Blog: ‘a serious challenge that businesses and the Government must address’
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%...
Monday Blog: Decent wages: What, Why, How?
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...
Monday Blog: Economic Development with a purpose
The recent Government Medium-Term Economic Strategy, 2014-2020 ('A Strategy for Growth') is a welcome statement of key economic goals even if the Strategy lacks important detail and a more ambitious social perspective which learns from one of the greatest crisis that has emerged since the foundation...
Monday Blog: Where to now (Post-Troika)?
A very strong narrative is gathering pace abroad and at home: There was ‘absolutely’ no alternative to ‘austerity’ in the case of Ireland once the storm broke in 2008; Ireland displayed remarkable and exceptional resilience, consensus and passivity in accepting the ‘tough’ decisions that ‘had to be...
Monday Blog: A Modest Proposal
Suppose you were the Minister of Finance in 2009 and that you were held up and forced to hand over a lot of money to a number of bust banks?. You didn’t have the money at the time so you took it out of a special pension savings fund built up by taxpayers meant for the next 50 years. Suppose that, in...