Irish Election - Coverage of Irish Politics, News and Current Affairs

Friday evening. Bank holiday weekend.  What better time for a document dump? We are now much closer to the “nearly 200″ figure for deaths of young people in some form of care/interaction that initially circulated in the media.  Not least because the 151 doesn’t include the earlier 37.   Apparently the post-18 years of age transition [...]

Brian Cowen to Enda Kenny today  – [Irish Times] “Contrary to how this is being portrayed, this is a payment into an overall fund that provides for the pensions of most Bank of Ireland staff. If it wasn’t made, the fund would be short-resourced to meet its obligations to all Bank of Ireland pensioners and [...]

One of the mysteries of the Irish economic crisis, which historians may eventually puzzle over, is the long-drawn out nature of it.  On March 30, 2010, we get decisions regarding the financial sector that other countries made 12-18 months ago.  And for all the disruption caused by the selective go-slows in the public sector, the [...]

The Irish Times has an interesting two part series on the predicament of the Irish unions.  Today’s installment provides a good insight into the minds of the union leadership and in so doing illustrates the challenge of relevance.  David Begg and Jack O’Connor now say that after 20 years of Social Partnership™, all they ever [...]

The Department of Finance has news dumped an analysis of “Replacement Rates and Unemployment” while everyone is waiting for the 12 Days of Christmas deal with the public sector unions to be finalized.  The replacement rate is defined as the percentage of potential disposable income in a job that could be retained by a household [...]

SIPTU’s Manus O’Riordan (head of research) has put on his wellies and waded through the recent CSO releases on wages and employment to argue that the media fixation with large double-digit wage differences between public and private sector workers is not warranted.  He has several points.

That graph made me wince… The Quarterly National Household Survey (figures on unemployment) figures for the first quarter of 2009 were released today. You can read the document in PDF format here.

Most of the reaction to the latest EU Commission forecast for the Eurozone and Ireland focuses on the unemployment prediction (16%) and the fact that their growth forecast is somewhat worse than the government’s.  But in a sense, we knew those numbers already.  The ESRI from last week was pretty dire, and for 2009 forecasters [...]

Wednesday’s Irish Independent is a case-in-point for those of us who suspect the press of siding with the Establishment against the people over Lisbon. With jobs losses growing by the week, they cynically attempt to link the issue to the possibility of a “No” vote to the June 12th referendum. This article is pure facile [...]

When Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair last summer, he was hit by the floods and then the foot and mouth outbreak — and went up in the polls. Brian Cowen might need a similar trend over the next couple of months. With Lisbon and the economy already looking like the hot potatoes of [...]

Alternative title for this post was “Irish Manufacturing- It’s a Bust”. Call for task force after 360 job losses

The Six one News had a report about the todays jobless figures showing a rise in unemployment coming mainly from construction. They had a report about how many rural areas depend much on construction something I mentioned a few weeks ago. What it reminded me of was a clip on reeling in the years. In [...]

500 jobs go at Galway Plant Budget 2008 coverage

While much of the media have been acting with glea and the other lot with denial there is a big issue that is being ignored. When ever I go home to my local to have a pint the conversation generally turns to construction. Now this is not a D4 type talk of interiors this conversation [...]

There has been much talk recently that a major fall-off in jobs in the construction industry was on the cards. So the CSO Index of Employment in Construction, June 2007 (Provisional) May 2007 (Final).  Makes interesting reading. Employment in June is down 1.1% on June 2006 but still ahead of June 2005. So overall not [...]

From RTE Up to 900 jobs are to be shed over the next two years at Xerox in Blanchardstown in west Dublin, following a review of the company’s operations in Ireland. The employees, who mainly work in a customer support call centre for Xerox clients, are to be transferred to a global services division within [...]