Inequality in Ireland today

Robert Sweeney 16/01/2019

With continuing housing crises, health crises, inadequate childcare, climate change inaction, there’s no shortage of public policy emergencies going into the New Year. They are all, to varying degrees, related to inequality, and how economic inequality translates into unequal political power. TASC has just released a report on income …

A divided state

Paula Clancy 02/01/2019

Dr. Paula Clancy is founding director of the independent, progressive Think Tank TASC (Think Tank for Action on Social Change) which she helped set …

Privatisation Pendulum Swings Back.

Paul Sweeney 20/12/2018

In my last blog in November, we saw that privatisation is being reversed in the UK, the original home of the Thatcher ideology of “rolling back the …

Now inevitable that public money will be wasted on rural broadband

Donal Palcic, Eoin Reeves 29/11/2018

The decision to continue with the procurement of the national broadband plan (NBP) is not a surprise as the main findings of the review by Peter …

A digital tax is coming

13/11/2018

The EU proposal to introduce a form of digital services tax (DST), that is, a tax on the sales revenues of firms whose main activities are in the …

Finally, the Privatisation Pendulum Swings Back.

Paul Sweeney 09/11/2018

Trends in Economics Trends in economics swing one way and then back. The privatisation trend that begun in the 1980s in the UK is finally swinging …

Public spending and services in the years to come

Robert Sweeney 30/10/2018

With the dust settling on the recent budget, it is a good time to take stock of Irish economic policy, current and future. In June, the Department of …