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 [...]

Life can sometimes be like an American country and western song:
‘My girl friend left me / my dawg bit me in the leg / my mamma joined the army / and my sister is in jail . . . but with the Lord’s help, I’ll carry on.’
Even the most collective minded of us accept [...]

Nearly half of the population would struggle to pay an unexpected bill of €1,000 in the next twelve months, according to a new Eurobarometer study. Forty-five per cent of Irish respondents to the Europe-wide survey indicated that there is a high or moderate risk that they would be unable to cope with such an unexpected [...]

The European Anti Poverty Network (EAPN) Ireland) recently published a factsheet for members on ‘Social Welfare: How Ireland Compares in Europe, which challenges some of the myths and misinformation on social protection spending in Ireland. In this article, Niamh O’Grady, Research Assistant, challenges the view that Ireland’s social welfare and protection levels are among the [...]

There are a number of things that have been brought to my attention recently, so to cover everything I’m going to give each of them a short mention.
No To NAMA
Tomorrow, the 12th of September there is a demonstration being organised to protest against the implementation of NAMA.
From the No to Nama facebook page:
“The voice of [...]

The Government now has its bookends. On the expenditure side, the McCarthy Report; on the taxation side, the Commission Report. Now we can stack the economy between the two and . . . squeeze. The only problem is that one of the bookends may not be so reliable. Indeed, it may fall off the bookshelf. [...]

Over on Progressive Economy Michael Taft provides his second thorough examination of the data on social welfare and the arguments behind the demands for cuts in the forthcoming budget (part one here). He looks beyond the payments themselves and includes the other benefits in kind, including rent supplement, school and clothing allowances, and medical cards [...]

Does the thought of NAMA concern you? And is the economic crisis and the proposed part solution, the McCarthy Report, a source of anxiety? Are you a bit puzzled as to the rhetoric surrounding it, after all the principals involved seem somewhat hazy on precisely what the effects of the implementation of both those will [...]

‘There are people who are working right now, who are looking at the possibility of losing their jobs, they cannot save, they cannot build up the savings to cushion potential loss, or potential risk of their job.  And, yet, they are paying increasing rates of taxation in order to sustain what is in effect, as [...]

So, Sarah Carey has apologised to Irish Times readers for deceiving them about Irish social welfare payments being the ‘most generous in the EU’, and made a correction in her column, saying, as Michael Taft argued, that they are not even ‘among the highest in the EU’, as the document she used to base the [...]