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 [...]

Cut people’s dole to reduce unemployment - did the people who write these OECD policy prescriptions learn their craft at Krusty’s Clown College? Of course, we’ve run into some curious analysis from the OECD before - especially their argument that Ireland’s housing boom was ok, it was just a product of demographic [...]

Michael Taft was on Primetime tonight talking about the JLC proposals. You can see a recording of the program here.
The proposal by the Minister for Enterprise, Richard Bruton - as mooted in the Irish Times report - is cynical in the extreme. Apparently, he wants to remove the ability of employers [...]

The Restaurant Association of Ireland and Ibec won’t like it. Fine Gael certainly won’t like it. The army of commentators armed only with superficial and out-of-date analysis won’t like it. But the report on the Joint Labour Councils written by Kevin Duffy and Dr Frank Walsh does a good job [...]

The Government has got itself into a bit of bother over this whole pension levy lark. But the complaints from the pension industry are a bit hard to take. In this regard, contributions from two leading pension experts - Gerry Hughes and Jim Stewart - are worth noting. [...]

The front page story on the Sunday Independent really says it all. Apparently, the Labour Court has awarded a pay increase to Bord na Mona workers. The Sindo no like. How dare workers get a pay increase? And in this dislike they make some claims which show how dumb [...]

At the heart of the Government’s emerging policy lies a profound dislocation and contradiction. Its Jobs Initiative is intended to promote consumer spending - a valid enough goal. Consumer spending has collapsed (by 10 percent) in comparison with the Eurozone average (less than 1 percent). Of course, consumer spending is [...]

On the eve of the Government’s job initiative Fianna Fail’s Michael Martin put it starkly:
‘Government’s don’t create jobs.’
This is straight from the kindergarten school of economics. Governments create jobs all the time. Let’s draw up a list.
1. The Government directly employs approximately 300,000 people in public services and administration: nurses, teachers, [...]