In a previous post we saw that public sector labour costs are below-average by EU-15 standards. The argument that Irish public sector workers are ‘over-paid’ in relation to their European counterparts holds no water whatsoever. However, that doesn’t answer the charge that, regardless of comparative costs, we just have to cut public sector wages because [...]

With industrial action in the public sector ramping up a couple of notches, it is worth revisiting a couple of issues in relation to pay. A critical issue is the fiscal benefit or otherwise that accrues to the Exchequer from cutting public sector wages - I will examine this in the next post. Here, let’s [...]

There is probably no one who really believes that NAMA will succeed in its core mission - freeing up credit for the economy. I doubt that even the Minister’s scriptwriters really believe it. Is there anyone out there who believes it? I thought so.
Whatever about the long-term fortunes of the banking sector there is no [...]

Davy Stockbrokers has produced the must-read report (so far) of the year. Entitled, ‘Years of High Income Largely Wasted’, it is one of the most damning indictments of the squandered boom years. Okay, on the surface it appears a pretty dry affair - analysing the growth in our net capital stock since 2000. But I [...]

The latest DAFT report is out covering rents.  I have written the quarterly commentary which can be read here (and thanks to Ronan Lyons for inviting me to write the commentary).  The headline news is that rents have ’stabilised’ and have started to rise - though whether this presages a long-term upward trend remains to [...]

Water charges (or levies or taxes) will come up the agenda and no doubt there will be considerable confusion as to what they are intended for: incentivise ‘efficient use of water’ or cover the cost of water provision. These are not necessarily intertwined; one may incentivise efficient use and not recover costs and vice-versa.
What is [...]

175 Boston Scientific jobs to go in Galway, the loss of 200 Bitech Engineering jobs in Louth,a seismic 750 job lost at Halifax, those depressing numbers that Ronan Lyons has pulled up - what are we to make of the state of the labour market only a few weeks into the new year?
Hard to get [...]

Following the St. Stephen’s Day sales there was much commentary to the effect that huge shopping crowds were signs of a new confidence resulting from the Government’s budget. We were waiting for tough action, we got tough action and now we are off in the shops with our credit cards. How the recently released Retail [...]

So George Lee has resigned.  No doubt this will fill newspaper columns and blog posts with analysis of what this means for Fine Gael, Enda Kenny (will he be pushed?, the Government and, of course, George.  So far the one question that has not been answered - and not raised much either - is:  what [...]

Yesterday evening I was on Matt Cooper’s The Last Word (5:00 segment) with a representative from IBEC discussing wage levels. I quoted the numbers from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Eurostat and Destatis (German Statistical Board) to show that Irish labour costs are not high; indeed, they’re rather low by comparison with our EU [...]