Frank Convery | Public Policy, Public Expenditure & GNP

The Case For Water Metering
— 12 Nov 2014

Some have questioned the expenditure on installing water meters and argued that better use of the money would be to fix leaky pipes.
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Adjusting the Tax Burden
— 22 Sep 2014

The introduction of residential property tax and water charges are positive improvements to the structure of Government revenue.
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Innovation Hubs And The Geography Of Jobs – Insights For Ireland From The US
— 29 May 2014

Innovation is a powerful driver of economic growth. This commentary draws on US experience of creating ‘innovation hubs’ which is very relevant for Ireland.
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Letter from California – Hospitals, Highways and Water
— 31 Mar 2014

California continues to be a world leader in most of what it does and how it does it.
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The Importance of Exuberance – Alfred Marshall and Garret Fitzgerald
— 27 Nov 2013

Frequent encounters with a four year old remind me of what leaks away as we grow older; joyful spontaneity makes way for caution, inertia, knowingness and calculation. Over the course of a long life, Garret Fitzgerald (1926-2011) was one of the very few who successfully resisted this entropy of the spirit. He was a largely…
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Organ Donation – The Case For ‘Opt Out’ Rather Than ‘Opt In’
— 30 Jul 2013

When money is short, it is especially important to seek out those opportunities that make us better off, and don’t cost any money. In his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman highlights the importance of framing in terms of shaping our decisions; the way we are asked can have a very large influence on…
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Independence Day – Insights From The US
— 4 Jul 2013

The most appealing aspects of US culture are those which are independent of its politics, military prowess, reach and power.
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It Is the Right Decision Not To Sell Coillte’s Timber Harvesting Rights.
— 24 Jun 2013

The Government has decided not to sell the harvesting rights to the State owned forests managed by Coillte…
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Getting Water Metering Right
— 25 Apr 2013

Some years ago, I spent an afternoon in the control room of the Singapore Electronic Road Pricing system with Eddie Lim Sing Loong, Engineer, Electronic Road Pricing. He explained that their system works as follows: you are charged for using the road, and this charge varies depending on the road and the time of day,…
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The First Steps in Ireland’s Emerging Climate Strategy Assessed
— 19 Mar 2013

Key Point1 The Irish government has published the draft heads of a climate bill. Because we won’t know the essence of what is proposed until we see the national and sectoral roadmaps that will follow, it is not possible to draw definitive conclusions as to the sense and effectiveness of what is proposed. But we…
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Implementing EU Directives – An Opportunity To Lead
— 19 Feb 2013

Key Point¹ The Irish policy system has been properly obsessed by the need to make progress in reducing the extent and impact of the bank related debt. Now that we have made some progress on this front, it is timely to focus on another dysfunctional aspect of Irish and European governance. By delays amounting to…
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