In the past the first expenditure to be cut during an economic downturn was capital expenditure. However, the cuts in capital expenditure of the late 1980’s and 90’s had left Ireland with an infrastructure deficit. This note highlights a number of important issues, which should be considered...

In Ireland as in many other countries there has been an ongoing debate on the nature, degree and trends of regional imbalance, which has led to substantial research output. While much is now known about these trends, the degree to which they are ameliorated by existing public policies has not...

Only a few research papers have analysed the spatial distribution of economic activity in Ireland. There are a number of reasons for this, not least the fact that comprehensive data on the location of economic activity by sector across all sectors has not been available at the highly...

The single largest project under the Irish National Development Plan (NDP) 2007-2013, is the construction of a Metro system. Despite the fact that this is the largest project under the NDP and the government’s transport strategy, Transport 21, no cost benefit analysis on the project has been...

Existing environmental accounts for the Republic of Ireland are at the national level. This is fine for continental and global environmental problems, but information at a finer spatial scale is needed for local environmental problems. Furthermore, the impact of environmental policy may differ...