With the IFSC now central to the government’s growth plans, some figures which may be of interest.
The only figure I can find for how much corporation tax the IFSC contributed is the figure for 2010.
it’s €1.4 billion - Dept. of the Taoiseach last July, ( citing a private report, not Revenue, which is interesting in [...]

In October 2011 Pat Rabbtte gave out thirteen licenses to twelve companies (press release here). The amount of blocks left around Ireland can be seen in this PDF map here, and the way it is done in the UK and other countries is explained in this SIPTU document from last year, available here (see pages [...]

The positive outcome of the 2011 Atlantic Margin Licensing Round will help bring a new momentum to the level of exploration activity in our offshore. Ireland must continue to communicate the message to international exploration companies that Ireland is open for business and that the Irish offshore has real potential.”
So said Pat Rabbitte, Minister for [...]

This article was originally published in the journal.ie last night.
How many speculators does it take to change a light bulb? The answer is none. They still think the broken one works.
The business model of asset price speculation - the model that broke the world - informs the National Assets Management Agency (NAMA), and it is [...]

This is a comparison between the number of vacant housing units uncovered by last year’s census, compared with the social housing needs of the state on a county-by-county basis, as provided by the Dept. of the Environment.
The excel file of this information is here.

Below is a graph of the ratio of vacant housing to social [...]

I’m working on a paper on NAMA at the moment, but I’ve been so tied up with other stuff that I’m only getting around to reading its 2010 annual report.
It’s incredible stuff.
NAMA actually tells us that a number of the loans transferred in Autumn 2010 have serious title, security and paperwork issues.
But instead of working [...]

[Interview from Near FM.]
NEAR-fm has been covering the Occupy Dame Street protest since its inception in October 2011. It has since gone on to become one of the longest running of such protests that are taking place globally. Finbar Markey is a spokesperson for the movement and he joins Michael FitzGerald to give a [...]

[This is the proposal for the pilot course as it stands today - hoping to refine and refocus it over the coming weeks, but this is the base of it here.

If the pilot course is successful, and there is sufficient interest within the organised trade union movement to continue with the course, then I'd see [...]

The hugely impartial Frances Ruane of the ESRI was a former non-executive director of Depfa Bank, which was based in the IFSC and which collapsed in 2008, costing the German taxpayer, via its forced ownership of Hypo Real Estate, well over 100 billion euro. The ‘hands-off’ regulation of the IFSC was key to Depfa’s business [...]