This is an interesting article.
Anyone who doubts the severity of this crisis should take a look at this chart.
These are now out. The general government balance for 2009 is now projected at minus 12 percent of GDP.
This statement was published yesterday (hat tip to Jonathan Westrup) and contains many proposals for developing regulatory capacity in Ireland. Amongst the most interesing are the proposal to increase the transparency of strategy and results for regulators and to enhance the monitoring capacity of departments over agencies, new networking arrangements between departments and agencies (an annual forum) and between agencies and stakeholders and increased support (within current resources, of course) for research and training in regulation. The statement is underpinned by a report on economic regulation in Ireland completed earlier in the year by the Economists Intelligence Unit and also published yesterday here.
The CSO has released a multivariate analysis of the 2007 National Employment Survey which shows broadly similar results to the recent ESRI study (which used data from the 2003 and 2006 surveys). I imagine that next week’s ESRI seminar should stimulate some interesting debate on this important topic.