Ireland, along with Sweden and the UK, allowed full access to its labour market to the citizens of the accession countries when the EU enlarged in May 2004. Given the limited number of countries that opened up and the rapid pace of economic growth in Ireland around 2004, a significant inflow was...

Ireland’s “Celtic Tiger” years saw GDP per capita rise from 60% of the EU average to 120% of the average over the course of the 1990s, with a growth in employment of about 40% over the period 1994-2001. What were the consequences of the boom for returns to education and wage inequality?...

This paper uses data from the 2003 and 2006 National Employment Surveys to analyse the public-private sector wage gap in Ireland. In particular, we investigate the impact of awards implemented under a number of wage setting institutions on the pay differential. These include the pay increases...

This paper uses a linked employer-employee dataset to analyse the impact of institutional wage bargaining regimes on levels of average labour costs and within firm wage dispersion in private sector companies in Ireland. The results show that while centralised bargaining reduced labour costs...