On Paper

DIRECTORYThe piecespublished and planned

Everything, in one place

Every question this publication is working on.

Some are finished and can be read now. Some are being reported. The rest are queued behind those, and that last group changes most — usually because somebody sent a question we had not thought to ask.

Nothing here is a roadmap. It is where the list has got to this week.

Live finished and publishedNext being reported nowQueued sources identified, not started

Start herewhat is finished

If you read one thing.

Each states the claim it is testing, names the error, shows the working, prints the strongest objection to itself, and ends with something that would move it.

43.7%of national income spent by the State — the lowest of 27

01Live

The money

Where does the second-richest country in Europe keep its money?

Ireland spends 43.7% of net national income — the lowest of 27 countries. The gap on the spending side is 3.6 times the gap on the tax side.

Read it →

2.71people added for every home built, 2016–22

02Live

Housing

Did the people who arrived fill the houses, or did we not build them?

The county that received the fewest people is the county that housed them worst. Hover any county on the map and see its full record.

Read it →

17.3%of one year's State spending, on one power station, in 1925

03Live

Precedent

Has this state ever built anything at this scale before?

A three-year-old state spent 17.3% of its budget on one power station. And the thing everyone blames for stopping it loses 56% of its cases.

Read it →

82%of everyone on a welfare payment is an Irish national

04Live

Work and welfare

Are immigrants living on the dole and getting free housing?

82% of everyone on a welfare payment is an Irish national. The claim has two real edges and we print those too.

Read it →

70%of documented incidents were filmed by the person committing them

05Live

Sentiment

The anger is real. So who is making money out of it?

Seventy per cent of documented incidents were filmed by the person committing them. That is not how we know — it is the finding.

Read it →

The full listby subject

Grouped by what it is about.

Most of these overlap. A piece about housing is usually a piece about money, and a piece about welfare is usually a piece about who counts as a neighbour. The grouping is for finding things, not for arguing.

Money and the statePartly published

What the country earns, what the State captures, and what it chooses to spend. Every other piece here eventually lands back on one of these numbers.

43.7%of national income spent by the State — the lowest of 27

01Live

The money

Where does the second-richest country in Europe keep its money?

Ireland spends 43.7% of net national income — the lowest of 27 countries. The gap on the spending side is 3.6 times the gap on the tax side.

Read it →

10Next

The windfall

How much of Irish corporation tax is a handful of firms, and what happens if they go?

Receipts by concentration, the sovereign fund, and what the Fiscal Advisory Council has already said about it.

Data pulled, analysis under way

Queued

What is left on a Friday

What does disposable income look like after housing costs, by county?

Income statistics are published before housing. The number that decides whether a place feels affordable is the one after it.

Queued

HousingPartly published

The supply arithmetic, the counties it falls hardest on, and whether this State has ever built at the scale it now needs to.

2.71people added for every home built, 2016–22

02Live

Housing

Did the people who arrived fill the houses, or did we not build them?

The county that received the fewest people is the county that housed them worst. Hover any county on the map and see its full record.

Read it →

17.3%of one year's State spending, on one power station, in 1925

03Live

Precedent

Has this state ever built anything at this scale before?

A three-year-old state spent 17.3% of its budget on one power station. And the thing everyone blames for stopping it loses 56% of its cases.

Read it →

09Next

The council house

Who dismantled the thing that used to build houses, and when?

Local authority completions per 1,000 people since the 1930s, and the year the capacity left the building.

Blocked on an FOI to the Housing Agency

Queued

The conditions

What does the full stack of planning requirements cost, cumulatively?

Each condition is defended on its own terms. Nobody has ever had to defend the total, because nobody has added it up.

Queued

People and placeNothing published yet

Where people actually live, at the finest geography the data allows — and how many of them the statistics cannot see.

06Next

Where people actually are

Does the map of arrivals match the map of the protests?

Population by nationality at Electoral Division level, against the locations of documented incidents and IPAS contracts.

Data pulled, analysis under way

08Next

The uncounted

How many people are living in Ireland that the statistics cannot see?

No official estimate exists. One advocacy survey says 17,000–20,000; one residual estimate says under 100,000. A regularisation scheme brought 8,311 people forward.

Sources identified

Queued

The plate

What does the year on a registration plate say about a county?

A car is the largest purchase most households make between houses. The fleet is a map of where money went and when.

Queued

Queued

The language

Is Irish spoken where the State says it is?

Daily-speaker returns against Gaeltacht boundaries, school enrolment and the places where the boundary has not moved in fifty years.

Queued

ServicesNothing published yet

The things people mean when they say the town is full: a GP, a school place, a bus. Mostly unmeasured, which is the finding.

07Next

The doctor at four o'clock

A woman in Roscrea said you have to drive to Nenagh for a GP after 4pm. Is she right?

Nobody has matched IPAS centre locations to GP capacity and out-of-hours cover. The dataset does not exist, so we are building it — this began as a quote we refused to print.

Building the dataset

Sentiment and informationPartly published

What the record says about the anger itself — where it is organised, where it is spontaneous, and who is making money out of it.

Behind these there is a longer queue that is not listed, because a to-do list published beside finished work makes the finished work look like a fraction of an ambition. If a question is missing, tell us.

The useful thing to send

What is the question about Ireland that nobody is measuring?

Two of the pieces above exist because somebody said something we could not check and we went looking. One of them we had refused to print for exactly that reason.

Draft notes