The front page story on the Sunday Independent really says it all. Apparently, the Labour Court has awarded a pay increase to Bord na Mona workers. The Sindo no like.…

At the heart of the Government’s emerging policy lies a profound dislocation and contradiction. Its Jobs Initiative is intended to promote consumer spending – a valid enough goal. Consumer spending…

On the eve of the Government’s job initiative Fianna Fail’s Michael Martin put it starkly: ‘Government’s don’t create jobs.’ This is straight from the kindergarten school of economics. Governments create…

When publishing its submission to the Government in anticipation of the Jobs Initiative, IBEC’s Danny McCoy stated: ‘Business will provide the job opportunities that the country so desperately needs, but…

I am taking a break for the next few days.  Will be back around the first week of May.  Hoping everyone a happy Easter and a celebratory May Day.

TASC did something quite unusual, even revolutionary: they looked up the facts. With all the unsubstantiated claims about labour costs, ‘Myths of the Irish Crisis: Wages and Competitiveness’ is truly…

I’m usually not partial to terms like ‘class war’ but readers might be able to provide an alternative description to what is happening. First, we find that AIB employees were…

There is one argument in the current bank bail-out debate that is getting tiresome. It goes like this: ‘If we do something the ECB doesn’t like they will cut off…

Tesco admits to price manipulation – increasing the price of products before reducing them again as part of a price promotion. I’m shocked. Checkout magazine claimed that Tesco, rather than…

Let’s play a game. Let’s auction off a Euro coin. These are the rules. The Euro goes to the highest bidder. The losing bidder, on top of losing out, has…

I have slightly edited this post from a previous version which mistakenly took a wrong quote from the Irish Times. It’s open season on public sector workers again. The Sunday…

Today there is a protest in O’Connell Street in support of restaurant workers at 12:30 to 2:00 pm. Today the Quick Serve Alliance is going to court to have the…

In a single line buried in today’s Quarterly National Household Survey Report, the CSO just made the future a bit bleaker. In February, the Live Register recorded an unemployment rate…

Given that Ireland’s corporate tax rate is in the news, it is well to get a grip on some facts in the debate. 1. Ireland’s headline tax rate of 12.5…

A number of commentators have referred to the rejoicing of Fine Gael and Labour TDs (even if some were disappointed by Cabinet appointments or lack of).  There is another constituency…

During the campaign, Fine Gael accused Labour of being a high-tax party, based on some artful manipulation of numbers. The fact is that is there was little difference between the…

In the first of a series of posts on the new Programme for Government (PG) I examine the broad fiscal proposals. The first thing that comes out is an alarming…

Long-term unemployment is the worst part of any jobless figures. We can deal with frictional unemployment (a temporary period during which people change jobs). Even short-term unemployment can be dealt…

When I re-tweeted Labour Councillor Cian O’Callaghan’s news statement calling on Labour not to enter coalition with Fine Gael, Brendan Ogle suggested such an eventuality was akin to pigs flying.…

Now we know. In early 2010 the Government was projecting nominal GDP growth to be 12.1 percent over the two years 2011 and 2012. Now the ESRI is projecting growth…