Government lies and myths cloud attacks on social welfare
Tune into Pat Kenny, Live at 5, or any other formulaic RTÉ current affairs programme these days and chances are you’ll come across a panel of ‘experts’ debating the social welfare dilemma. It’s no coincidence that, two years into a recession, with unemployment and a deficit still [...]

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 [...]

Ireland after NAMA has an interesting blog post which links to Ronan Lyons assumptions about whether those running NAMA have got their assumptions right with regard to the “fall from peak to time-of-tranfer, the yield, and how yields might correct”. The writer goes on to say that “given the drop in land values, the oversupply [...]

The TASC open letter published in the Irish Times on Monday is still providing plenty of food for thought. Focusing on the section of the letter that discusses the prospect of ‘restructuring taxation and expenditure in a progressive and expansionary manner’ Michael Taft expands on what this might entail in terms of taxation.
The phrase ‘fiscal [...]

Sixteen months after the Dublin government committed the state to underwriting the six main banks’ total deposits and loans, and half a year since the introduction of the NAMA initiative - the issue of home repossessions has come to the fore. Billions of euro have been invested in the banks, eleven to be exact. Not [...]

New Capitalism? The Transformation of Work by Kevin Doogan (Wiley Press, 2009)
The subtitle of this book is slightly misleading: the book’s focus is not so much the transformation of work in recent years, but rather the distance between the discussion of work by academics, journalists, and politicians, and the material reality of work in the [...]

[An open letter to the Government: Signatories are listed below]
THE GOVERNMENT’S economic strategy is failing. The Irish recession has been deeper and longer than almost any other in the industrialised world.
Consumer spending has collapsed while at the same time unemployment and emigration have soared. Crucially, investment has plummeted off the chart. Not only have Government [...]

John Recto, the third man to join the Green Isle Foods hunger strike today had to call to Naas Garda Station this morning, where he was informed that his work visa has not been renewed. He was told he has until March 8th to leave the country. He is from the Philippines and has been [...]

The following is my translation of an article by Tasos Iliadakis, first published on January 25 2010 in the daily paper ‘The Country’ in Crete.

- all those who forget the past cannot have a future
A. The background
During the early 1940s, Berlin, in order to have financial means of securing its strategic objectives in the Balkans, [...]

And so the battle is on. The cuts to social welfare and child benefit in Budget 2010 saw the government cross the Rubicon to a place where no ‘right’ is safe anymore. That means that the long-time target of employers’ groups, business lobbies and vested interest politicians - the minimum wage - is back on [...]