Fiscal Council

After the 1977 election and before the new Fianna Fáíl government was formed, I travelled to Brussels with a senior Department of Finance colleague. O(...)

The Department of Finance has hit back at criticism of its budgetary strategy from the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (Ifac), insisting its plans were (...)

One of the most essential, but least well-understood aspects of macroeconomics is that economics is counterintuitive. This is because macroeconomics, (...)

There are many signs that the Irish economy is growing close to its potential output. In particular, the stress in the housing market, with rapidly ri(...)

It is not financially viable for builders to construct “affordable apartments” with sales prices of between €240,000 and €320,000, a Government report(...)

The Irish economy is currently experiencing a fall in unemployment not seen since the late 1990s. There are obviously many factors that are different (...)

The MacGill Summer School, held annually in Glenties, Co Donegal, and which has been taking place all this week, is easy to parody. Official Ireland t(...)

The chairman of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council Prof John McHale said on Thursday he stands over a warning he issued over the level of overall spend(...)

Reading many of the pre-budget headlines in recent weeks I was reminded of an exchange I had with a member of the audience at the MacGill summer schoo(...)

Between the mid-1970s and 2007 the budget for the coming year was presented to the Dáil in December, immediately before the new financial year started(...)