Dan O’Brien: The outlook is not as benign as the budget would have you believe

Dan O’Brien: The outlook is not as benign as the budget would have you believe

Dan O’Brien: The outlook is not as benign as the budget would have you believe


Warning: This column is full of grim warnings. As catastrophe-bias is an almost unavoidable mind virus these days, it is an imperative antidote to offset it with discussion of the (many) positive developments that are taking place in our world. One of these is the rise and rise of Irish and European tech. If someone sat down in 2019 and set out a design for the Irish economy in 2025, they would have planned for a shifting of the entire economy towards high-wage and higher value-added activities, and away from lower-skilled and low-productivity ones. That is exactly what has happened,…