When is an economy out of recession?  When it returns to and exceeds the level at which it entered the recession.  The economy exited the recession in 2014 – the…

Some commentators have recently challenged the assertion that there is no recovery outside Dublin.  Dan O’Brien does up the numbers and show, with the exception of the West and recently…

Here is one part of a presentation I made to the Nevin Economic Research Institute’s Labour Market Conference held earlier this month in the University of Limerick.  This may seem…

The Programme for Government has provision for cutting inheritance tax.  This is bleak business.  Cutting inheritance tax will be a bonanza for high-income groups.  Welcome to the new politics, inseparable…

Why isn’t this on the agenda?  Why are so few talking about it (one exception is Unite the Union, there are other civil society groups in this conversation, too)?  We…

We are potentially heading down a dangerous stretch of road ahead –leading us into the Ultra-Low spend zone.  In this zone, investment declines and, so competitiveness and productivity; health and…

The Stability Programme Update, the latest economic and fiscal projections, signals the start of the budgetary politics that will inform the next Government.  In particular, it shows the level of…

The Sunday Business Post’s investigation into JobBridge was devastating.  The programme has been used to staff the HSE, Hewlett-Packard, public enterprises, supermarkets and universities.  A large number of interns report…

The National Competitiveness Council (NCC) has released its latest Cost of Doing Business in Ireland.  It is always an interesting compilation of graphs, charts and statistics that compare Irish competitiveness…

Workers at Tesco’s have voted overwhelmingly for industrial action to resist the proposed wage cuts that management is demanding.  The issue is now going to the Workplace Relation Commission.  This…

We will soon have a government.  What kind will it be?  Time and a Programme for Government will tell.  But what we really need is an experimenting government; one that…

It’s starting.  When the penny drops and the incoming Government finds there is less money in the kitty than their manifesto promises were based on, the scramble for scarce resources…

With all the talk about industrial action and wage claims and wage offers and summer of discontent, etc. etc. etc. it is worth taking a step back and to look…

With people are returning to work after the bank-holiday weekend, here are some thoughts on reducing the working week – so that people can enjoy the equivalent of a bank-holiday…

The small town of Somerset, Kentucky had a problem. It was a potentially popular tourist destination because of its proximity to Lake Cumberland but local businesses and residents struggled with…

During the Cold War, lack of reliable information about Soviet Union politics forced Western analysts to seek out alternative signs  and portents:  the removal of portraits, the rearranging of chairs,…

Following on from my recent blog about the squeezed middle which showed that middle income groups received less than the national share of income than the EU-15 average (due to…

We have a housing crisis, a homeless crisis, a health crisis, an investment crisis; our education system is under-resourced, our indigenous enterprise sector is out to lunch and the Dail…

Seamus Coffey has been digging up some numbers which he self- deprecatingly refers to as one more ‘silly addition’ to what can be done with income distribution statistic. But silly…

An interesting piece of information came out from the CSO last week, three days before polling day. It showed increases in employment falling to a trickle. Are we seeing a…