A small follow on from Michael Taft’s post, about the well-known exports tax scam known as the “Double-Irish”.
The story of the tax scam has gone around the world and some at this stage, but I’ve yet to see or hear of it on Irish TV or radio, or in the print media.
Following on from my [...]

Much of the damage to the economy, and the consequential dramatic rise in unemployment was avoidable. If fiscal policy had been used to reduce demand rather than to exacerbate the inflationary pressures it could have defused the property bubble well before it became dangerous. This would have required budgetary policy to have targeted in increasing [...]

Irish housing statistics are notoriously vague. There is no accounting system for new housing units - rather, the CSO has to rely on figures from the ESB with regard to new connections, and from that it extrapolates the amount of new units.
The CSO’s figures for the amount of mortgages sold is also somewhat oblique, as [...]

I gave up on Irish journalism about 18 months ago, just after the 2008 bank guarantee scheme and the December budget of that year. And while this has done my blood pressure no end of good - it’s not the news that drives me mad, it’s the inane analysis - it also means that I [...]

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain.
The happy highways where I went
and cannot come again.
I was brought up in the Seventies. Strong colours and oversized jumpers. These are my memories. The boundaries of my world were the Harmonstown road to the Santry river, the shops on Edenmore park, the old dump [...]

This is just a quick response to the latest truism that wage inflation undermined the Irish economy.
Basically, what we see in Ireland over thirty years is that the average industrial wage and inflation oscillate around each other quite closely. As inflation drops/rises, wages follow, and vice-versa.

What follows deals almost entirely with internal divisions within Cork republicanism and is not meant as a comprehensive outline of republican and left-wing activities in the city during the period covered. Moreover, these notes were put together following specific queries from historical researchers and, hence, the focus at times is on matters that they raised.’ [...]

There’s a comment often bandied about when it comes to housing in Ireland: ‘our parents got through it, so can we.’
Well, our parents didn’t get through this, because our parents never faced what Ireland is facing now - at least in terms of housing debt.
The sheer level of theft which has taken place - and [...]

The figures below are based on the Quarterly Household Survey reports of employment by SOC classification. They relate to the changes in employment from the fourth quarter 2008 to the fourth quarter 2009.
The Quarterly Household Survey is a sample survey, details of which are outlined here.

In the June budget the Minister for Finance, Mr. Richie Ryan, announced that the two major Associated Banks [Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Bank] had agreed to make £40 million available to house purchasers over the next two years. The two major banks were each to make £10 million available for house purchase loans [...]