This week, the Government announced that it would be increasing the property tax, which, as you all know, goes to fund local government and county councils. Later today, Niamh and I will have duelling articles on whether increasing the property tax is a good idea. And, sods law being what it is, no sooner was […]
Credit where it is due: this is an interesting, and what Sir Humphrey Appleby of Yes Minister fame would have called “courageous” proposal, first reported by Hugh O’Connell of the Independent: “speaking at Government Buildings on Tuesday, Social Protection Minister Heather Humphreys said she had asked her officials to examine “pay-related benefit” where a person’s […]
Why is a widely used, clinically trialled and out of patent drug now suddenly considered “controversial” by the media? Youtube now explicitly forbids mention of the same drug – ivermectin – in its “community guidelines”, which have become a sort of continually-shifting technocratic blacklist that you have to abide with to stay out of the […]
18 out of 19 Government Departments will see increases in salaries, wages and allowances for their staff in 2021. The increases are in addition to the hundreds of thousands of euros allocated to each Department’s staff in the Travel and Subsistence category. This follows confirmation that the Government’s National Economic Recovery Plan announced today includes […]
Táinaiste Leo Varadkar has dubbed his own lockdown “absolutely bonkers” and “draconian,” and called for “a new normal” to help society “build back better.” Speaking during a committee meeting on “Online Content Moderation,” Varadkar explained all the ways in which lockdown infringed on civil liberties in an “unprecedented” way – but then proceeded to defend […]
It feels like a very long time ago now, but it is worth remembering, and reminding ourselves, that the original point of lockdowns was to reduce social contacts between people, and limit opportunities for Coronavirus to spread amongst the population. The success of lockdowns was supposed to be measured in scientific terms – the flatness […]
A stupendous success, says Stephen Donnelly: Mandatory hotel quarantining has worked effectively Health Minister Stephen Donnelly says. He tells the Seanad that 4,616 people have entered hotel quarantine here, 178 tested positive for Covid-19 and 59 cases associated with variants of concern were detected. — Mícheál Lehane (@MichealLehane) May 31, 2021 178 cases of Covid, […]
After working away diligently to establish a smothering regulatory framework that would stifle innovation, the Irish government have finally arrived with a fully fledged but elegantly simple solution, the Climate Action Bill. Reading through the government’s press release, its evident the Bill is intended as an all-pervading regulatory burden on all aspects of life. The […]
An ESRI report published today examines the persistence of poverty among families with children. The report, The Dynamics of Child Poverty: Evidence from the Growing Up in Ireland Survey, is based on thousands of families in two cohorts of those with children aged 0 – 9 years in 1998 and 9 – 18 in 2008. […]
As bad as the new Red C/Sunday Business Post opinion poll is for Fianna Fáil the headline figures are not actually that obviously terrible. 14% nationally is still the stuff of nightmares for the party that has dominated Irish politics since the 1930’s, but it actually represents a slight increase on the previous version of […]
Look at the headline on this RTE News story from yesterday: RTE’s headline claims that Professor Luke O’Neill has said that it “might be time to slow down the re-opening”. There is only one problem, and that is as follows: O’Neill said nothing of the sort. What did he say? Well, you have to dig […]
This Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill 202 is perhaps the most far-reaching piece of legislation to come before the current Dáil. My colleagues and I, in the Rural Independent Group, are fully committed to improving the environment and reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. However, we believe that in pursuing these noble objectives, […]