An Economic Evaluation of Incineration as a Residual Municipal Solid Waste Management Option in Ireland

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Competitiveness Council (NCC) report that despite pressing EU policy requirements, Ireland remains heavily dependent on indigenous landfill capacity and overseas markets for its Residual Solid Waste (RMSW) reprocessing and waste to energy capacities. This deficit threatens Ireland’s competitiveness and its environmental policy objectives. In the context of government revisions to national waste policy, economic analysis should underpin the policy choices used to identify indigenous RMSW management alternatives to landfill. This paper seeks to make a contribution to the debate by evaluating the RMSW treatment option of incineration by performing a cost-benefit analysis (CBA). The research demonstrates that certain configurations of RMSW incineration can provide a net benefit, relative to the status quo of landfilling RMSW in Ireland. In doing so, the study illustrates the sensitivity of an incineration project’s benefits to its scale, operational costs and its capacity to recover energy. It finds that incineration does not provide a net benefit relative to landfill, if its scale and energy recovery capacity are insufficient. The methodology may be adapted to evaluate other RMSW infrastructure options e.g. mechanical, biological treatment (MBT).Cost-benefit analysis, Residual municipal solid waste, Incineration, Ireland

The cost-of-living crisis in the UK and Ireland: on inflation, indexation and one-off policy responses

This paper compares social policy responses to the cost-of-living crisis in the UK and Ireland. In seeking to protect citizens from an inflationary shock, a series of fundamental social policy questions arise. What would the aims of support packages be? To what extent should support be universal or targeted? If targeted, did existing policy architectures facilitate or frustrate the targeting of support? As the scale and persistence of the inflationary shock became evident, smaller and near-universal responses gave way to larger support packages with a greater reliance on targeting. Social security systems played an important role in policy responses, though often by passporting one-off payments rather than a strengthening of these core programmes. Passporting led both to improved distributional outcomes vis-à-vis the more universal elements but created new administrative challenges and led to rough justice in some circumstances. The reliance on one-off payments underlined the temporary nature of policy responses