We need to manage our national finances more prudently.

Corporation tax receipts for the month of June were a record-breaking €3.6bn. There was been €9bn taken to date this year, basically 50% up on last year. Total take could be over €20bn this year for the full year. This is basically three times the 2015 number of nearly €7bn which was itself very high and at the time everyone assumed it was down to the decision of a certain fruit company to locate its IP in Ireland.

Seamus Coffey has a good thread on it here.

So if someone can tell me what "sustainable" revenues are please let me know - I haven't a clue any more!
 
tomdublin said:
FFG are panicking about losing the next election to SF and are throwing around money in an attempt to save their skin. Much of that spending goes to lobby groups, half-baked social initiatives, self-serving quangos or is soaked up by bureaucracy.
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Whereas in SF's regime it will simply be gifted instead to "community organisations" who are effective affiliates (as it currently does in the north).
 
tomdublin said:
The cost of renting in Dublin in relation to incomes is vastly higher than in almost any other comparable city accross the developed world. I don't understand why there are still those who are trying to sugarcoat it.
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Ahem

"1 bed apartment" which is really a studio, 497m2 in Earls Court - £1,950 pcm

1 bed artisans dwelling D8 https://www.daft.ie/for-rent/house-15-ring-terrace-inchicore-dublin-8/3966884 €1710pcm

Dublin is not much different from any other major capital city - try renting in Stockholm, for example.
 
Purple said:
No they couldn't. That's just ridiculous.

They could buy factory built homes from the mainland, the USA or even the UK but that would require a change in existing building standards and the unionised staff in the Department of the Environment couldn't be bothered doing that. Okay, in fairness, they probably don't have the skills or resources to do it either, just on the off chance they could be bothered.
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They could even relax those standards so that similar builds to past builds of the so called "golden age of housing" (to quote Prof Michelle Norris) but no, the Oirish Times would get everso upset at the orrore of the audacity of allowing the peasants to buy and live in 1 bed apartments smaller than 45m2 (despite this being perfectly normal in capital cities everywhere else). Its 3 bed semi Ds for everyone OR ELSE we go to the high court!
 
tomdublin said:
The government isn't even picking the low-hanging fruit. There are tens of thousands of unauthorized Airbnbs that could be pushed into the long-term rental sector but aren't. There is rampant dereliction & vacancy even in prime city locations and again nothing done about it. Same story with crazy HAP rents which crowd non-social welfare recipients out of the market and create perverse incentives for people not to seek work. Why is all this happening? Because the government's priority is to drive up property prices no matter how horrifying the social cost.
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as of April 2020 there was 7500 Airbnb rental units in Dublin - however that includes units that would not be lettable as units under current PRTB rules, apartments that might only be available for a short periods while otherwise in use, individual rooms - how many apartments are actually fully let all of the year as AirBnb is unknown.
That said, its certainly a major issue - but how liveable these units are is open to debate. Its believed for example, that many unlettable bedsits that were put out of use in 2008 due to the bedsit ban are now let under AirBnb where no such restrictions exist.
 
lff12 said:
Ahem

"1 bed apartment" which is really a studio, 497m2 in Earls Court - £1,950 pcm

1 bed artisans dwelling D8 https://www.daft.ie/for-rent/house-15-ring-terrace-inchicore-dublin-8/3966884 €1710pcm

Dublin is not much different from any other major capital city - try renting in Stockholm, for example.
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London is not a comparable city (it's appropriately ten times larger than Dublin). Check cities like Vienna, Brussels and Helsinki where you can rent a 1 bedroom apartment for a few hundred a month.
 
lff12 said:
as of April 2020 there was 7500 Airbnb rental units in Dublin - however that includes units that would not be lettable as units under current PRTB rules, apartments that might only be available for a short periods while otherwise in use, individual rooms - how many apartments are actually fully let all of the year as AirBnb is unknown.
That said, its certainly a major issue - but how liveable these units are is open to debate. Its believed for example, that many unlettable bedsits that were put out of use in 2008 due to the bedsit ban are now let under AirBnb where no such restrictions exist.
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It's admittedly anecdotal, but where I live in Dublin (inner suburb around ten mins walk from the city centre) there are dozens of cottages and apartments exclusively for Airbnb use. Everyone knows where they are and they are all unauthorized. Local residents association keeps reporting them to Dublin City Council but nothing ever seems to happen. There is simply no will to enforce this.
 
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tomdublin said:
London is not a comparable city (it's appropriately ten times larger than Dublin). Check cities like Vienna, Brussels and Helsinki where you can rent a 1 bedroom apartment for a few hundred a month.
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Average after tax wages are significantly lower in Austria (about 25% lower). Apartments in Vienna are more expensive to buy.
Helsinki is cheaper but their after tax income is about 10% lower than ours.
While we under tax low to middle income earners and don't really tax wealth at all and while we have high rates of underemployment we'll always struggle to provide the sort of public housing infrastructure that we want.
10% of our working aged population is in receipt of a disability benefit. That's indicative of a population that sees that they can get, not that they should do. While that's the case we'll always have problems.
 
Purple said:
10% of our working aged population is in receipt of a disability benefit. That's indicative of a population that sees that they can get, not that they should do.
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Is 10% actually high? What % should it be and what is the target % based on?
 
tomdublin said:
Maybe because in other countries they check
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Our institutions of State don't work as well as they should. In some cased that's due to under funding due to the misallocation of resources elsewhere, but we live in a very socialist country where we treat the symptom of inequality with welfare without really addressing the complex and multifaceted root causes. I'm a big fan of identifying and dealing with root causes.
 
The root cause is that Ireland is one of the most class ridden societies in the Western world. Take university attendance rates - under 10% in some Dublin postal codes and 98% in others. Even people's accents are tied to their social class. This is compounded by a rentier & entitlement mentality that extends across all social classes but has class-dependent outcomes. Being on social welfare/disability/lone parent benefit is a kind of low-end rentier alternative if your class background prevents you from extracting rents from society by becoming a solicitor, landlord, pharmacist or GP.
 
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tomdublin said:
The root cause is that Ireland is one of the most class ridden societies in the Western world.
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???

Ireland’s conundrum is that domestic businesses are too small to employ enough people for wages and salaries sufficient to enable them to be taxpayers and contribute to the exchequer.

Everything else is consequential to that.
 
Sophrosyne said:
???

Ireland’s conundrum is that domestic businesses are too small to employ enough people for wages and salaries sufficient to enable them to be taxpayers and contribute to the exchequer.

Everything else is consequential to that.
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Before responding with "????" you might want to invest 30 seconds reading the post in its entirety.
 
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tomdublin said:
The root cause is that Ireland is one of the most class ridden societies in the Western world. Take university attendance rates - under 10% in some Dublin postal codes and 98% in others. Even people's accents are tied to their social class. This is compounded by a rentier & entitlement mentality that extends across all social classes but has class-dependent outcomes. Being on social welfare/disability/lone parent benefit is a kind of low-end rentier alternative if your class background prevents you from extracting rents from society by becoming a solicitor, landlord, pharmacist or GP.
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This is typical " pour me, claptrap " since 1996 third level education has been available to everyone, initially free but now costing €3000 a year.

Multiple courses has been added to the third level curriculum and for all abilities.
Education takes effort especially from the students and it's their families responsibility to help students, encourage them and explain that having a good education opens up more opportunities.

My wife is proudly from a 2 up 2 down in Wexford town, right across from Bride Street Church and she and her 4 siblings all came out of college with

2 PHDs, 2 Masters , one in public health, another Qualified Accountant now a Director of Accenture.

Her mother worked in a local hotel at night and her father worked in the motor factor industry, and was a member of Labour, he also sold his car to allow the eldest to have "digs " in Cork, (UCC).

You might like posting some statistics from the Nevin institute but the reality is that since 1996 the obstacles to third level education and university has never been easier to jump, and if people don't bother trying to better themselves why should any government or society care about their plight, afterall its self inflicted.
 
The numbers are what they are. *Why* they are like that, whether people should try harder, etc. are valid questions but that's a different debate. The numbers show that there is a sizeable self-reproducing underclass in Ireland and this underpins many problems from unemployment and drug abuse to crime.
 
This paper from the Parliamentary Budget Office discusses the consequences of Ireland’s dual economy - “a global, export-oriented multi-national sector and a more domestically oriented, labour-intensive sector dominated by small and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs).”

In fact, the vast majority of enterprises (92.4%) in Ireland are micro, each employing less than 10 people.

The CSO breakdown of the business demography in Ireland for 2020 is:

Number of Enterprises by employment size class
MicroUnder 10
257,555​
92.4%​
Small10-19
10,981​
3.9%​
Small20-49
6,439​
2.3%​
Medium50-249
3,221​
1.2%​
Large250 and over
666​
0.2%​

No matter what metric is used, multi-national businesses outperform domestic businesses even where they operate in the same economic sector.

“Before the pandemic, multi-national companies were already a key driver of tax receipts.

In 2019, multinational companies were responsible for:
  • 27% of all employment
  • 45% of all income tax receipts, and
  • were liable to pay 79% of corporation Tax.
The pandemic increased the divide between multi-nationals and SMEs.

In 2020 multinational companies accounted for:
  • 32% of employment
  • 49% of employment taxes and
  • 82% of corporation taxes.
Whereas corporation tax payments from SMEs were down 40% in 2020.”

Although there is concentration on Corporation Tax receipts, multi-nationals also accounted for 49% of PAYE receipts.

The paper goes on to explain the difficulties facing SMEs.

“A key challenge is boosting innovation and productivity levels. Overall, the World Economic Forum’s index of international competitiveness sees Ireland ranked 24 out of 141 countries.

Denmark, Finland and New Zealand, similar countries to Ireland, were some of the top performing economies. This is the competitiveness context the Irish SMEs are operating against, both a vibrant multi-national sector in Ireland and a very competitive international environment.

This is important as an OECD report finds that Irish SMEs are not very active in international markets, and SME productivity growth is stagnant.

There are weaknesses in SME management skills, capital investment levels and technology adoption. Access to finance and skills shortage are also issues.”
 
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