Art and the economy

Last nights programme on Irish playwriting during bubble and bust was thought-provoking and enjoyable (I’m not sure if the link works outside Ireland). It also gave us a chance to see frequent commentor on this site, Gavin Kostick, in his natural habitat.

I love Irish theatre, and the last 10-15 years have given us some fabulous plays. But O’Toole wanted something more: art that engaged with the really big themes in Irish society, a lot of which are, nowadays, economic. I found myself wondering how you would have written a bubble play that would have been more than an unfunny and joyless (Michael Colgan’s phrase) social satire. But surely there are cleavages in Irish society today that are ripe for artistic exploration.

Your Better Life Index

The OECD has launched a new index with the aim of facilitating comparisons of the quality of life across countries. You can find the country summaries here.

Ireland does quite well in the rankings, although the usual caveat about using GDP in an Irish context applies.  Moreover, the data used are mostly from 2008 and we have undoubtedly slipped towards the relegation zone since then.

2009 data on household living conditions published

The CSO has just released the 2009 results of its annual Survey of Income and Living Conditions. SILC is the official source of data on household and individual income and also provides a number of key national poverty indicators, such as the at risk of poverty rate, the consistent poverty rate and rates of enforced deprivation. The accompanying press release highlights a number of the key findings.

SILC_summary_results_2009