Last month, Ireland’s National Competitiveness Council published a report on the cost of doing business in Ireland. This post reviews some very important findings outlined in that report, in particular the importance of labour costs in a services-based economy and how much the costs of utilities and property actually matter for Ireland’s competitiveness. Read more
This post reviews how the wage bill changed across different sectors during 2009, using the latest CSO figures on hours worked and wages paid. Construction and finance have their own issues, but the most interesting comparison is between the public service, where the pay bill still has not fallen, and the rest of the private sector, where it has fallen by 13%. The only sustainable solution involves connecting what public service organisations do back up with how they finance what they do. Read more
This post reviews the (scant) latest information from NAMA’s second tranche. It discusses the problems caused by Anglo’s omission from the figures NAMA gives, before estimating the likely true haircut for the first two tranches. It then calculates the total fall in property values implied by the ever-rising haircuts, before discussing some good news, bad news and neutral news from all this for the taxpayer. Read more
This post uses the latest CSO data to estimate unemployment rates for each county, by age group and by gender. It also presents to interactive tools, a map and a motion chart, for visualising Ireland’s unemployment crisis. It finds that unemployment is highest among young men & in the Border, Midlands and South-East regions. Read more
Eurostat’s publication of prices of food and drink across Europe has highlighted again how expensive Ireland is relative to its neighbours. This post examines prices across Eurozone members since 2001 and finds that the damage was done in Ireland by 2003 – and that much has been reversed in the last two years. It’s unlikely, though, that Ireland will rank below third in price league tables any time soon. Read more
This post examines the myth that the Celtic Tiger has left Ireland with no legacy other than high unemployment and debts. It looks at ten things that are an integral part of the legacy of the Celtic Tiger years, from 400,000 more jobs to a motorway network that is one of the biggest in Europe. Read more
This post examines Fintan O’Toole’s claim that the bank bailout has reduced Irish people to serfdom. In particular, it challenges the notion that the bank bailout is Ireland’s biggest economic problem, by comparing it to the budget deficit (and the national debt). It also challenges the idea that Ireland has no economic future and gives five grounds for optimism about those “lucky enough” to work in Ireland over the coming decade. Read more
This post reviews the latest report from the CSO on unemployment. On the up side, most sectors in Ireland have not shed a lot of jobs – losses have been concentrated in four sectors in particular. On the down side, the extreme gender disparity in unemployment – with women significantly less likely to be unemployed at all ages than men – can only be bad for Ireland in the medium term, with household formation, and the long term, with our pensions crisis. Read more
Following Minister Lenihan’s speech last week on the next Budget, this post takes stock of the latest estimates of receipts and expenditure and puts the progress so far in reducing the budget deficit in a ten-year perspective. It then outlines eight things that need to happen over the coming five years, in order to get the deficit back down under 4%. Read more