David McWilliamsOpinion

Australia’s housing crisis looks very like Ireland’s, but it’s not the same

Today, the key battle for the Australian worker’s living standards is the same throughout the English-speaking world: the ...
David McWilliams

As Ireland has become richer, more Irish people are heading to Australia

Australians get a bigger societal bang for their government spending buck. There’s barely an Irish family that doesn’t have a ...
David McWilliams

A gap has emerged between the Irish establishment and the Irish street

Over the past few decades, one of the electoral attributes of the Irish centrist parties – Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael – is an ability to gauge where the majority of the population are on big issues and ...
David McWilliams

Could France go bust? One of Europe’s biggest economies has pimped itself out to the world

“Gradually and then suddenly,” is how Ernest Hemingway described bankruptcy in his 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises. This is what often happens when people run out of money and options. At first money ...
David McWilliams

Houses are being built in Ireland, so why can’t ordinary people buy them?

It’s not every day I worry about the welfare of estate agents. This tribe doesn’t immediately spring to mind as an oppressed minority worthy of our protection – but these days, the main street’s ...
David McWilliams

The more US tax money we get, the more dysfunctional the Irish economy becomes

From plutocrat to bureaucrat, everyone seems to have an opinion on Dublin’s proposed MetroLink. Some argue it’s too expensive to build, others that it’s too expensive not to build. One opinion that ...
David McWilliams

Ireland’s massive problem with ‘in-your-face’ crime is feeding fear

This week Fox News, that bastion of truth, claimed that violent crime in Dublin is surging. Armed with a ‘statistic’ that murders and assaults were up 114 per cent, the American broadcaster reported ...
David McWilliams

An answer to Ireland’s housing crisis is right behind us

When you are in a crisis, the choice is never between good and bad – it’s always between bad and worse. Ireland has a housing crisis. We have far too many people and not enough homes for them. We ...
David McWilliams

A lesson from The Godfather as Wall Street backs crypto assets it once dismissed as a ‘fraud’

One of the joys of writing a weekly column is the unusual tributaries explored, often sparked by real-world events. Today I’ve been watching old clips of The Godfather, in particular Marlon Brando’s ...
David McWilliams

This is what we need to do in Ireland if we want stable, affordable house prices

One of the golden rules of economics is you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Managing a problem will be easier using hard evidence, backed by accurate data. It is a business school version of the ...
David McWilliams

Ireland needs immigrants. But our economy can’t accommodate an infinite number

No matter what some people might argue, Ireland needs immigrants. This economy and society cannot survive without them. From healthcare to high-tech, construction to hospitality, the country would ...