LATEST ARTICLES
Viewpoints
Irish retail grocery trends this year
Colm McCarthy
If food prices can be manipulated upwards by retailers to boost profits, they must possess market power.
14 May 2023 Viewpoints
Colm McCarthy: beehives or buses for Ireland?
For a high-income country with low population density, sprawling cities and uneven access to public transport, Ireland is a natural candidate for high car ownership.
10 May 2023 Viewpoints
Colm McCarthy - Efforts to discourage car usage
Urban road space is scarce and it is prohibitively expensive to increase capacity.
Thoroughbred industry State funding is misunderstood
What fair-minded person could object if elderly billionaires’ champagne budgets were spent on Portakabins to shelter the street-clothes of young soccer players, left soaking in the pitch-side ditches?
3 May 2023 Viewpoints
Colm McCarthy - Ireland's ports
Small islands with decent main roads are not promising candidates for investment in rail freight.
26 April 2023 Viewpoints
The legacy of Brexit for Northern Ireland
Two former UK prime ministers campaigned for the Remain cause during the 2016 referendum, citing potential difficulties for the peace process.
12 April 2023 Viewpoints
Why are the French on the streets again?
Everyone grumbles about higher retirement ages and nobody welcomes extra taxes to keep them low, but only in France do the laws of arithmetic drive people to the barricades.
5 April 2023 Viewpoints
Colm McCarthy: financial regulators react to banking crisis
European banks, including the main surviving Irish ones, have better capital buffers, more cautious lending policies and better supervision than was the case during the bubble.
22 March 2023 Viewpoints
Life on the edge: how Ireland profits from peripheral status
Does it matter to NATO that a country like Ireland could offer a dozen extra fighter jets to the alliance’s current fleet, which already out-matches the Russian total?
15 March 2023 Viewpoints
Sunak urges acceptance on new deal
Regulatory divergence would reintroduce barriers to NI’s enjoyment of the best of both worlds.
8 March 2023 Viewpoints
Colm McCarthy: targets or policies?
It might be no bad thing if future development was confined within the city of Dublin, where derelict sites abound.
1 March 2023 Viewpoints
Colm McCarthy - Extended reliefs for the hospitality sector
It is clear from the Department of Finance's recent report on Ireland’s official debt that it perceives substantial risks in further giveaways.
22 February 2023 Viewpoints