Ireland, in the data
An independent, source-first read of Ireland's public record. Where the country outperforms its peers, where it lags, and where documented decisions have cost the public purse. Every figure carries a source and a method label.
The page runs in that order — objective indicators first, international and EU comparisons next, then a chronology of documented state failures. Nothing here is a political take; it is what the audited record shows.
Annual data on the economy, population, public services, housing, justice & defence, health and climate. Trend pill shows change vs 10 years ago (or since data begins).
AI summaryOn paper the economy looks strong: GNI* has roughly doubled since 2012, unemployment is back near full-employment lows, and corporation tax receipts have surged past €30bn. The debt pile has stopped growing in cash terms but remains one of the largest per person in the developed world, and the tax base is dangerously narrow — a handful of multinationals now pay the bulk of corporation tax. Cumulative inflation since 2020 has quietly eaten a fifth of household purchasing power.
Public-finance context, 2025. Ireland's spending-to-GDP ratio is unusually low relative to the EU average — both benchmarks are shown.
Ireland runs one of the leanest public sectors in Europe — government spending sits at roughly 21% of GDP, less than half the EU average of nearly 50%. That gap means the State has historically chosen a low-tax, low-spend model, yet the documented losses alone amount to a material slice of even that restrained budget. The waste catalogued here is not a rounding error: measured against actual government expenditure, these losses represent years of foregone investment in housing, health and climate infrastructure.
Measured against GDP, the losses are still significant — and because Ireland's GDP is inflated by multinational activity, the real bite on domestic public services is larger than the headline ratio suggests. If Ireland had spent at the EU average level, the same absolute waste would have been a smaller share of a much bigger public purse; instead, every billion lost falls harder on a smaller base. In short, the benchmark data underscores that Ireland cannot afford this scale of waste — its low-spend model leaves no margin for error.
Like-for-like comparison against the EU average and the best / worst performing member state. Where a metric has no harmonised EU definition (notably homelessness), the closest published proxy is used and noted.
Ireland sits mid-table or better on most headline social indicators — life expectancy above the EU average, low homicide rates, and unemployment comfortably beneath the bloc. The picture darkens on housing: house prices have grown far faster than the EU average, and the low "housing cost overburden" figure masks a very Irish problem — the ~14,000 people in emergency accommodation are excluded from EU-SILC entirely, because there is no harmonised EU definition of homelessness. Health spending looks low as a share of GDP, but that ratio is heavily distorted by multinational profits; against GNI* Ireland spends around the EU average.
The comparison highlights where the documented losses on this site sting most. Countries with similar or lower per-person wealth deliver better housing outcomes, and the gap between Ireland's raw resources and its housing performance is one of the widest in the EU. The waste catalogued in the chronology has real opportunity costs measured against these benchmarks.
A common political claim is that "illegal immigration is rising and driving crime." Ireland publishes no dataset linking immigration status to offending, so this section shows the three things that are measured: asylum inflows, deportation enforcement, and prison committals by nationality — alongside recorded crime trends.
What the data supports: asylum applications rose sharply from roughly 3,000 a year pre-pandemic to a peak of ~18,500 in 2024, on top of ~112,000 Ukrainian arrivals under Temporary Protection. Sexual-offence and assault counts have risen since 2015 (though sexual offences reflect improved reporting as much as underlying incidence). Deportation enforcement has collapsed relative to orders signed — in 2024 the State issued about 2,400 deportation orders and enforced roughly 90 of them.
What the data does not support: a direct link between immigration and rising crime. Total recorded offences are broadly flat-to-down across the decade, burglaries are down more than 60% from their 2011 peak, and homicide is low and stable. Prison committals by nationality track closely with the non-Irish share of the population — non-Irish nationals are around 19% of committals and around 20% of residents, so over-representation is not visible in the prison data. Ireland publishes no offender-nationality breakdown in recorded crime, so stronger causal claims are unfalsifiable from public statistics. The correlation between asylum applications and the recorded crime rate over 2015–2024 is r = 0.18 (correlation, not causation, and driven mostly by the post-2021 asylum jump). Note: CSO flagged 2020–2023 crime figures "under reservation" during a Garda PULSE data-quality review.
Documented state failures since 1998
This total counts monetised cases only. Non-monetised failures — governance breakdowns, service failures and referendum defeats with no clean fiscal loss — appear in the chronology below but are excluded from this sum. Each case is counted once here; the party chart further down attributes value by ministerial responsibility. Read this figure alongside the benchmarks above: Ireland runs a lean state, so waste falls on a smaller base than in most EU peers.
Weighted by the party that actually held the responsible ministry, not by mere presence in coalition. Where no ministry weight is set, value falls back to an equal split across coalition parties. Toggle to view the editorial "lead owner" only where set.
The allocation reveals a stark concentration of documented losses among parties that have actually held national office. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael dominate the bars — unsurprising, given their long tenure in government and their central role in the banking bailout, the single largest loss on record. Labour, the Greens and the Progressive Democrats appear at proportional shares of coalition-era failures, while independents and regional groupings account for smaller slices of cases where they held ministerial responsibility.
Sinn Féin does not appear in this dataset. The party has never been in government at national level in the Republic of Ireland and therefore has no established track record of ministerial decisions, procurement overruns or bailout liabilities against which to measure waste. That absence is methodological, not political: this tracker records documented governance failures, and without a period in national office there is simply no comparable record to assess.
The chronology below documents tens of billions of euro in avoidable losses — from the ~€64bn bank bailout and the National Children's Hospital overrun, to the National Broadband Plan, PPARS, e-voting machines, PSC/MyGovID, tribunal fees and repeated HSE IT write-offs. Taken together, the monetised waste dwarfs what the State currently spends fixing the crises Irish people live with every day.
For context: ending child homelessness (roughly 4,500 children in emergency accommodation) would cost a fraction of a single year's bailout interest — the same money could have built social housing for every family currently on the waiting list several times over. The National Children's Hospital overrun alone (~€1.5bn+ above budget) would fund the entire annual recruitment of consultants, nurses and therapists needed to clear hospital trolleys and cut waiting lists. The broadband and IT write-offs combined could have delivered free GP care for every child under 18 for a decade, or retrofitted hundreds of thousands of homes to cut energy poverty and emissions. Put simply: Ireland has not lacked the money to solve homelessness, health waiting lists, or the housing crisis — it has repeatedly spent that money on the failures catalogued below.
Covered bike shelter at Leinster House built by the OPW at a cost of €336,000, drawing widespread public criticism.
Security hut installed at Miesian Plaza, Dublin, at a cost of approximately €1.4m.
Cost of holding the March 2024 Care and Family constitutional referendums, both of which were defeated.
Unbudgeted HSE overspend requiring a €1.5bn supplementary estimate.
Government purchase of modular homes at an average of ~€442,000 per unit, well above initial estimates near €200,000.
Annual state payments to private landlords under HAP, criticised as a long-term subsidy in place of public housebuilding.
State cost of the Direct Provision accommodation system for asylum seekers.
Annual estimated loss to Revenue from illicit tobacco trade.
Undisclosed payments and governance failures at RTÉ prompted public and Oireachtas inquiries, resignations and licence-fee revenue disruption.
State redress scheme for homes affected by defective concrete blocks in Donegal, Mayo and other counties.
State redress payments to survivors of mother-and-baby institutions.
Concerns over land ownership, religious influence and governance of the planned new National Maternity Hospital at St Vincent's.
Ransomware attack on the HSE crippled health-service IT for weeks. Recovery and remediation cost the state over €100m.
A €1.8m printer purchased for Leinster House could not fit in the building and was never used as intended.
Data Protection Commission ruled compulsory use of the Public Services Card beyond social-welfare purposes was unlawful. State had spent approximately €60m on the scheme.
Failures to disclose audit results of cervical smear tests. Redress and settlements paid by the state.
Construction cost estimated at €650m in 2014 has risen above €2.2bn, with further overruns projected. Overrun above the original approved cost.
Introduction of the Eircode postcode system. Direct cost to the state approximately €38m; system criticised for design choices that reduced usability for logistics.
Sale of NAMA's Northern Ireland loan book to Cerberus. The C&AG estimated a probable loss of stg£190m to the state compared with a phased disposal.
Setup of Irish Water included €180m in consultancy fees, contributing to public opposition and eventual abolition of domestic water charges.
Interest cost on the €31bn promissory notes issued to fund Anglo Irish Bank and INBS, before their restructuring into long-dated bonds in 2013.
State subsidy contract to National Broadband Ireland after original €500m estimate rose to €2.7bn (excluding VAT and contingency).
State recapitalisations of AIB, Bank of Ireland, Anglo Irish, INBS, EBS and Irish Nationwide. Net direct cost after asset sales, dividends and levies, per the Comptroller and Auditor General.
Governance scandal at training agency FÁS: extravagant travel and hospitality expenses led to resignations and the agency's replacement by SOLAS.
7,500 Nedap voting machines purchased, never rolled out nationally, stored for years, then scrapped for €70,000.
Dublin metro project first proposed in 2001, repeatedly redesigned, cancelled, revived. Costs sunk in design and consultancy without construction.
Health-service payroll and HR system abandoned after cost ballooned from €9m to more than €220m without full deployment.
The headline total sums the amount_eur of every case flagged as monetised that matches the active filters. Each case is counted once, regardless of how many parties are associated with it. Non-monetised cases — governance failures, service failures, referendum defeats without a clean fiscal loss — are shown in the chronology but excluded from the total.
"Associated parties" are the parties in government during the emergence, escalation or political ownership of a case — not an assertion of sole causation. The party-comparison chart uses three layered rules, in order:
Ireland's general government expenditure-to-GDP ratio (21.0% for 2025) is unusually low relative to the EU aggregate (49.5%). The euro measure of Irish GDP is also inflated by the presence of large multinationals. Both benchmarks are shown, and neither should be read as a moral judgment on all public spending — they exist to contextualise scale.