Stop the presses! Fine Gael has come out against a flat-rate household charge. All you wild and whacky lefties can put away your signs, leaflets and banners - the senior Government party is in agreement with you. I don’t know where this leaves Minister Hogan, but the Fine Gael [...]

Just to note for regular readers. I was away for a week, so only cross-posting Michael’s Notes on the Front post today. It was originally published on the 5th of July. DB.
It gets this weird - the Government is subsidising companies that are cutting their own workforce, all in the name of subsidising [...]

In previous posts I showed that Irish public services were already grossly underfunded by EU norms and that, using ESRI data, cutting public sector employment will have only a trivial impact on the fiscal deficit. In this last of three posts on public services I will sketch out an alternative fiscal approach to public [...]

There may be all sorts of reasons to cut public services, but reducing the fiscal deficit is not one of them. I repeat: we can cut the number of public sector employees - but it will have only a trivial effect on the fiscal deficit. It will, however, do [...]

The Croke Park Agreement’s first annual report found considerable ‘savings’ in expenditure on public services: €289 million was saved on the pay bill due mainly to 5,000 less jobs while a further €308 million was saved in non-pay costs. Even so, Ministers are warning that they will need more, much more. In fact, we’re going [...]

The issue of wealth in Ireland is certainly hotting up - at least in the Irish Times. Last week we had a strong intervention by Fintan O’Toole, claiming that Ireland is an extremely wealth country, a fact that contradicts the austerity narrative we are being subject to.
A few days later Dan O’Brien claimed [...]

A rainy Sunday morning; it brings many thoughts - of outdoor activities cancelled, indoor DIY projects advanced, no football and letting Garibaldy go through the Sunday Independent so that we don’t have to suffer that fate (save for Gene Kerrigan who should always be read in print or on-line).
It also brings to mind the [...]

You can hear the Ministers brushing up on their variants of TINA - there is no alternative. Ruairí Quinn is leading the way:
‘Education Minister Ruairí Quinn insisted that unless Ireland stuck to the fortnightly austerity targets it must deliver to the European Central Bank in Frankfurt there would be no money left [...]

Apparently, the Marquis didn’t like the window tax.
‘The Marquis of Dowshire presented two petitions [to the House of Lords], one from Dublin, and the other from Belfast, complaining generally of the excessive burthen of taxes, but especially the Window tax which . . . bore most unfairly as well as most [...]

A couple of cheers for Minister Leo, putting both his feet in the mouth of the Government. In a refreshing dose of realism he stated what everyone knows - we’re not going back to the markets anytime soon.
Unfortunately, this realism landed the Minister in a bit of warmish water. Not because of [...]