Full coverage: Economy

Inflation represents yet another segregation in our economy, between those who can cope with rising prices and those who cannot. The government knows this too but is either unwilling or unable to end this segregation.

Bobby Healy has been thinking a great deal about the future: What it looks like, how we get there and how it is made. In an interview with Stephen Kinsella, the Manna founder outlines his views and talks about innovation, funding and the issues facing indigenous business.

In the past, Irish governments have seriously struggled to manage periods of excess demand. As the floodgates of growth reopen, can the nation steer the flow towards businesses capable of fixing the faults exposed by Covid?

Ireland’s public sector unions are gearing up to renegotiate their pay agreement. In the end, the state will pay more, workers will work about the same, and taxes will have to be found to pay for it all. Then, workers in loads of other sectors will ask for more too.

Current energy and transport plans show lessons from the hundreds of millions of euros wasted on peat-fired power stations have not been learned. Existing rules provide for the scrutiny needed to avoid this, but government departments simply ignore them.

In a special podcast following COP26 and the publication of Ireland’s Climate Action Plan, four of The Currency’s writers focused on climate change discuss the vast distance left to cover between official discourse and reality – and its implications for the role of the state.

It’s peak season for pre-budget submissions, with 15 examined here. A good way of analysing the demands coming from various sections of society is to relate them to the amount of taxpayers’ money spent on dog racing.

Under the us-versus-them approach favoured by conspiracy theorists, no policy decision can ever be made. Yet it underpins a lot of the reaction to the Government’s Housing for All plan among those who won’t settle for a step in the right direction – only a full leap into Nirvana.

Adam Tooze’s latest book chronicles the year between January 20, 2020, and January 20, 2021, as the world realised Covid for the threat it was and moved to deal with it. The economist and historian talks about how the crisis has altered the world, the nature of geopolitics and the future.

With no momentum to tackle greenhouse gas emissions, removing carbon from the atmosphere is our next best hope of slowing global warming. Yet planting trees is not happening either, which means it is time we put the right price on it.