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...

Since March 2017, a new income-related housing support for those with a long-term housing need called Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) has been available throughout the state. This paper examines the potential impact on financial work incentives of transferring long-run Rent Supplement...

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...

A method of systematically assessing the “first-round” impact of tax and transfer policy changes on the income distribution and the incidence of relative income poverty is proposed. It involves the construction of a “distributionally neutral” policy, which can be approximated by a policy...

This paper sets out the basic framework and results on the responsiveness of married men and married women to changes in their gross wages. The framework for exploring the impact of a tax change on labour supply is briefly described. The impacts of alternative forms of tax cut are examined. The...

Nolan and Callan examine why relative income poverty rates in Ireland have remained high compared with many other EU countries. They begin by presenting the basic facts of the situation and look at a variety of possible explanations for the observed patterns. They conclude that differences in...