Ronan Lyons | Personal Website
Ronan Lyons | Personal Website

general election 2011

Scoring the General Election manifestos on economic policy

The most important General Election in Ireland’s recent history takes place on Friday. RTE have published an overview of the five main parties’ policies across the ten most important policy areas, as chosen by their audience. Eight of these policy areas are economic. This post goes through the parties’ policies in each of the eight major economic policy areas and scores them out of five in each. While the criteria for scoring parties is unlikely to be populist, hopefully it will be of use to those voting later this week. Read more

This is the people’s economy: Two questions to ask candidates

Ireland’s general election is ten days away. This post outlines the two most important economic policy questions that people should ask their candidates. One is about banking debt and outlines a solution that saves EU face as well as Irish money. The second is about the deficit, which still dwarves the banking crisis and means tax rises and spending cuts are a necessary evil. Read more