Is Ireland the Worst-Run Rich Country in Europe?

The David McWilliams Podcast

David McWilliams

News & Politics

4.5 • 692 Ratings

🗓️ 15 April 2026

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ireland looks like a success story on paper: booming tax revenues, record public spending, and a global reputation as a modern, wealthy economy. Yet on the ground, something feels deeply off. In this episode, we step back from the noise of protests, strikes, and rising fuel costs to ask how can a country with so much money deliver so little? From housing and healthcare to transport and infrastructure, the pattern is the same, soaring budgets, missed targets, and no consequences. We explore the idea that this is an insidious system where incentives are broken, accountability is absent, and a permanent “Mandarin class” operates behind the scenes, untouched by elections or outcomes. The result is an economy where public spending fuels inflation, squeezes workers, and hollows out the productive sector. This has graduated from a left-versus-right story to a question of care versus contempt. Unless that changes, Ireland risks squandering a once-in-a-generation windfall while the cracks in the system grow wider.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature.
0:06.6	This podcast is powered by ACAST.
0:12.9	How are you doing there? It is time for the podcast.
0:15.6	The podcast is coming from the barricades. Well, not necessarily from the barricades.
0:19.4	But Ireland has been barricaded in in the last week.
0:23.0	We are going to try and take a bird's eye view of the protests, the strikes, the fuel
0:29.5	prices, the relationship between the government, the inability of the state to get its act
0:34.2	together, all that sort of stuff.
0:36.2	But on the line looking very Antipodeon
0:39.8	is John from Melbourne. How are you, Ed? I am very good working on my tan, Mac, working on my tan.
0:46.5	Well, in comparison to my pasty self, you look positively. You look like a positive adonis,
0:53.3	a Greek god is what you look like in comparison to the translucent reds are here.
0:58.7	You can actually see through him completely.
1:01.2	What's the crack?
1:01.9	How is it down there?
1:03.5	Well, I have to say, I'm loving Australia.
1:06.5	It's fantastic.
1:07.5	I've got about 48 hours left here.
1:14.4	But we've driven about 2,500 kilometers.
1:21.4	Wow. From Melbourne, down along the Great Ocean Road, all the way to Adelaide, and back,
1:26.9	and back through the Grampians, which I absolutely loved. They're a mountain range. Sandstone mountain range. Beautiful. I know I've been sending you some pictures of birds and
1:30.6	stuff, which I know you've been deleting, but that's okay, Mac. I'll print them out and give
	...

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