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THIS WAS SUPPOSED to be the ‘Housing Budget’.

A series of government plans, strategies and false starts have so far failed to stem the surge in rents, reverse the relentless rise in homelessness or put homeownership back within the means of low-to-middle income families.

A decade since the property bubble burst and homeless figures began their long march to 10,000, this was flagged as the moment when the Minister for Finance would do what Ministers of Finance do to tackle a social crisis when there’s an election on the horizon – throw money at the problem.

So, let’s take a deep dive into the good, the bad and the ugly of the housing measures in Budget 2019.

*** This article was first published on thejournal.ie on 10 October 2018 ***

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NOBODY LIKES TO get a call from the boss when they’re still in bed.

Exactly ten years ago, in the early hours of 30th September 2008, I got such a call: one I’ll never forget.

From January 2008 to the general election of February 2011, I was, among other things, economic advisor to Joan Burton TD, then opposition Finance Spokesperson for the Labour Party.

As such, I had a front-row seat to the political theatre and economic tragedy of Ireland’s unfolding banking crisis.

*** This article was first published on thejournal.ie on 30 September 2018 ***

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You can’t be ‘a little bit pregnant’, as the saying goes, but you can be ‘a little bit equal’.

In February, we marked the centenary of women getting the vote in Ireland and the UK. Later this year, we will celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the 1918 general election. This was a momentous occasion not only because it marked a seismic shift on our path to independence. Sinn Féin’s Countess Markievicz became the first woman elected to the House of Commons.

But, all else was not equal. All men over 21 were entitled to vote, but women had to wait until they were 30. Combined with property ownership requirements, this meant that less than half the women across Ireland and the UK could actually vote.

*** This article was first published on thejournal.ie on 18 April, 2018 ***

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LIKE A SUNNY spell sandwiched between snowstorms, the number crunchers at our Central Statistics Office published their own blizzard of economic data recently.

The headline numbers are nearly too good to be true: at 7.8%, GDP growth last year was comfortably the highest in Europe, and ahead even of India, which has leap-frogged China as the fastest-growing big economy in recent years.

Strong growth helped generate nearly 1,300 new jobs per week during 2017. This meant that by the end of the year the total number of people in work was within touching distance of the two-and-a-quarter million peak hit in late-2007. Cue cries that the lost decade is over. These are neither lies, nor damned lies: just statistics.

*** This article was first published on thejournal.ie on 26 March, 2018 ***

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