Shane Coleman writes:
‘ . . . the reality is that if there was a general election tomorrow and Fine Gael and Labour became the new government, there is probably no decision of the past nine months that they would reverse.’
I fear he might be correct.  Of course, there would be changes at the edges.  We [...]

Michael Taft of ILR and Notes on the Front blog, Mick O’Reilly and Jim Stewart of TCD School of Business and the progressive-economy.ie blog were talking to Seán Ó Siochru about the banking crisis in Monday’s (4 May 2009) edition of The Sound, DCTV’s new current affairs programme.
Here’s the audio extract of the segment on [...]

Daniel Finn, who has interviewed Gilbert Achcar and Patrick Cockburn for Irish Left Review has an excellent Diary piece in the latest London Review of Books. It deals with the recent CIRA and RIRA killings, the current state of Northern Ireland politics and responses to what is happening in the North in the South [...]

Updated on 5th of May 2009 to take account of the fact that I have since verified that the explanation about OECD tables being ‘problematic’ was provided to Sarah by a press officer in the Dept. of Finance. I have also modified a section which may have implied that the other claims about Ireland’s generous [...]

One of the major problems of political life in this age where everything is available almost at an instant is the sense of familiarity, even dullness, of policy proposals. Take, for example, the idea of a third tax rate for high earners as mooted at the Labour Party National Conference yesterday by Eamon Gilmore. It’s [...]

Eoin Ó Broin’s Sinn Féin and the Politics of Left Republicanism (Pluto Books) looked like a timely book when it came out a few weeks ago.  Events since have only emphasised the relevance of its argument.
The book opens with a trenchant defence of Sinn Féin against allegations that is an authoritarian, quasi-fascist movement. Ó Broin acknowledges [...]

…and this brings me to the third point which goes to the root of the whole matter: that the relation to capital and labour, employer and employed, should not be one of hostility and suspicion and self-seeking, but one of sympathy and co-operation, each caring for the interests of the other as if they were [...]

Writing in the Irish Economy blog Karl Whelan has a quibble about the argument that developed between Fintan O’Toole and Martin Cullen while discussing the pension levy on Questions and Answers last Monday evening. Specifically, O’Toole reprised his point which he made in the Irish Times that the government was not aware of exactly how [...]

The Irish think tank for action on social change TASC, has just launched Progressive Economy, a new blog for progressive economists, many of whom are part of the TASC Economists’ Network to comment on the Irish economy. While the media is awash with plenty of economic opinion at the moment, the majority of it seems [...]

Can you feel it?  Brian has dinner with Sean and Co.  Was one of the Anglo-Irish 10 there breaking bread with the Taoiseach-elect?  And Senator Dan Boyle signals a wobble on the part of the junior coalition partner.  Low-paid civil servants are demonstrating; as are the Guards; Dublin Bus is facing into an all-out strike.  The National [...]