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

Recent months have seen the issue of prostitution come to prominence as the Presidential election approaches. A disturbing parallel with the Lisbon debate is evident in the near unanimity of the political and intellectual ‘Establishment’ for a blind support of traditional policy approaches. How can someone simultaneously claims the mantle of liberalism while also attempting [...]

Although we’re still in the phoney war stage of the election campaign, it seems that the basic FF strategy is to throw a bunch of, er, stuff, at the wall and see what sticks.  In that regard, we got today in the Senate an interesting and tendentious exchange between Sen. Alex White (Lab.) and Minister [...]

It’s too soon to say that we are in the home stretch of our political drama.  Brian Lenihan, wearing his Minister of Finance hat – “If you want to ensure that some person doesn’t pay tax, someone else has to pay tax. That’s now how we’re going to operate as a State. So as a [...]

In a news dump that would impress Andy Coulson, the government clearly put the word around yesterday that it would not be implementing the abolition of the so-called “Section 23″ property tax reliefs and this is confirmed in the Friday afternoon release of the Finance Bill, which was already overdue.  Specifically, according to the Minister’s [...]

Clearly overnight the government was told that the tactic of sending the Brians out to deny the obvious — that we are negotiating a loan — was making things worse so the new spin today is that because we’re so special, the IMF is designing a special type of loan just for us.  One where [...]

Central Bank board member* David Begg reviews Peader Kirby’s book on the collapse of the Celtic Tiger – It cannot be gainsaid that the social outcomes were less than were hoped for but the last agreement, Towards 2016, was the closest we have ever come to a social democratic programme in this country. This collapsed [...]

In today’s UK emergency budget, George Osborne announced a new levy on bank liabilities (excluding retail deposits and capital) of 0.04 percent rising to 0.07 percent after a year.  It will raise about £2.5 billion when fully operational.  Today during Leaders Questions when Enda Kenny put Brian Cowen on the spot about the shock new [...]

This might appear to be a little behind the curve, thanks to my first effort getting lost on the WP app. Anyway….. The response of Ceann Comhairle John O Donoghue to the reports of his extremely large expenses bills from his time in Arts, Sport and Tourism unveil a couple of things our erstwhile snippers [...]

Exchequer figures were released by the dept of finance in the last few hours. Don’t worry, I’ve no wince-inducing chart this time. Main points, Exchequer deficit now stands at €14,709,153,000 (€14.7bn), this time last year it was €5.6bn. So, more than doubled between Jan 08 and Jan 09, ouchies. It should be noted however that [...]

If you’ve just sat down after a slap-up dinner and thought “hmm, I wonder what the International Monetary Fund have said about Ireland in their latest Staff Report” and considered jumping across to IMF.org, don’t bother. I’ll sum it up here for you. Note: This was a staff report – the IMF has a staff [...]

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 [...]

Alistair Darling didn’t have much to work with today.  But it’s nonetheless interesting to look around the edges of his bleak budget and compare to the Irish context.  In that regard, what stands out  are the tax and pension measures.  A new top rate of income tax of 50 percent.  Pension relief scaled back for [...]

The IMF has released its latest Global Financial Stability Report.  With recent events, they might need a new title.  Given its global coverage it doesn’t get too deeply into any economy besides the major ones, and being a public international organization, it has to be careful in how any criticisms are couched.  Nevertheless, a few [...]

We’re still digesting the implications.  A few quick impressions.  First, a jarring opening –

The IMF has released several papers as part of its reassessment of its own role and the conventional wisdom that had governed economic policy advice prior to the current crisis.  One paper looks at the state of public finances in many advanced and emerging market economies, including Ireland.  There is a lot of detail, but [...]

Money protects you if you have enough you are secure if you do not you are not secure. During a recession like we have at the moment with job losses left and right the desire for security is strong so people cut back and keep the money they have.