Ireland is one of the countries most severely affected by the Great Recession. National income fell by more than 10 per cent between 2007 and 2012, as a result of the bursting of a remarkable property bubble, an exceptionally severe banking crisis, and deep fiscal adjustment. This paper examines...

Ireland is one of the countries most severely affected by the Great Recession. National income fell by more than 10 per cent between 2007 and 2012, as a result of the bursting of a remarkable property bubble, an exceptionally severe banking crisis, and deep fiscal adjustment. This paper examines...

An important aspect of the impact of the economic crisis is how pay in the public sector responds – in the face not only of the evolution of pay in the private sector, but also extreme pressure on public spending (of which pay is a very large proportion) as fiscal deficits soar. What are the...

The economic crisis impacts directly on the distribution of income via unemployment and private sector wages, but the way policy responds in seeking to control soaring fiscal deficits is also central to its distributional consequences. Having sketched out the background in terms of inequality...

Although relative income poverty rates vary from year to year, the rankings of different industrialised countries according to these poverty measures tend to be rather stable. Ireland is consistently among a group of countries with relative income poverty rates considerably above the European...

This paper utilises the SWITCH model to carry out a detailed analysis of recent changes in the tax and welfare systems and to evaluate their effects in the light of policy objectives such as those set out in the National Anti-Poverty Strategy and the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness. On the...

CONTENTS: GENERAL SUMMARY 1 INTRODUCTION 2 MEASURING THE IMPACT OF TAX AND WELFARE CHANGES 3 CHANGES IN POVERTY, ECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT AND TAX BENEFIT POLICY 1987-1994 4 THE EFFECTIVENESS AND EFFICIENCY OF SOCIAL WELFARE 5 WORK INCENTIVES AND THE TAX WELFARE SYSTEM 1987-1994 6 A COMPARATIVE...