Now that the Troika is leaving town it is a good time to take stock.  We don’t do that very well.  We don’t evaluate, we don’t compare inputs with outputs. …

'Now it isn't easy to stand up for truth and for justice. Sometimes it means being frustrated. When you tell the truth and take a stand, sometimes it means that…

The drums are beating.  Throughout the nation we hear a growing chorus demanding tax cuts (including the leader of the Labour Party) to relieve ‘hard-pressed’ families.  And this demand is…

Remember all those observations?  About how the highest income groups pay almost all the tax and how terrible it is that begrudging lefties want to tax them more?   About how…

We have been told that we are ‘all in this together’, everyone has ‘shared the pain’ and that the wealthiest have borne a 'disproportionate amount of the burden'.  Is this…

Relief throughout the nation – employment rising, joblessness falling; the new CSO release should give us something to cheer about.  Some quick notes on what the numbers are telling us:…

The Dail Technical Group is putting forward a private members’ motion calling on the Government to re-enter negotiations with the ECB with a view to writing off the Anglo-Irish bank…

Every Friday I hope to feature a telling statistic – one that explains an issue simply and says more than a ream of posts ever could.  Here is the first…

Oh, the trouble one gets into by pointing out the obvious.  There have been comments on the post, Purging Ourselves of Our Young, claiming that my factual reporting of the…

If what the Sunday Business Post claim is true, the Government has committed a profound breach of trust with the Irish people – a breach which should be urgently investigated…

At the weekend over 200 young people gathered in Liberty Hall under the auspices of We’re Not Leaving to draft a Young People’s Charter.  The charter addresses a number of…

Day by day it gets weirder.  First, the EU commits itself to breaking the link between banking and state debt.  This was described as a ‘game-changer’ and led some in…

While Eurozone Governments continue to debate the details of the banking union; while the Irish government continues to insist that the deal reached last year includes bailing us out for…

Don’t be taken in by the spin.  Social protection payments have not been protected.  Not ‘core’ payments, not ‘non-core’ payments, not any payments.  They have been cut in actual terms,…

Cuts in Child Benefit, Youth Programmes, school capitation grants, higher education, student grants, youth unemployment payments – the economic war on youth has run into hundreds of millions and cost…

I am a great fan of universality.  It binds people from all social constituencies through shared public provision.  It pools risk on the insurance principle.  It removes public goods and…

Don’t be under any illusions:  there is an economic war being waged against young people.  It is being fought on a number of fronts:  education, social protection, labour market and…

It was a listless budget, a thin budget, a budget without narrative or direction, without reform or innovation.  And, of course, it was another austerity budget which took from the…

So, Fine Gael has caved in to Labour.  There will now be only €2.5 billion in fiscal adjustments (read: austerity), not €3.1 billion.  A victory for the junior partner or…

As the Government does its post-mortem on the Seanad referendum, Switzerland is gearing up for a vote in November on a referendum that is truly reforming.  It’s called the 1:12…