Austin Hughes

speaker

415 appearances 6 recordings 2 series first heard Oct 2025 last heard 19 Jun

Austin Hughes’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 6 in all, peaking in Dec 2025 with 2.

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Breakfast Business with Joe Lynam · K-shaped economy · 23 Dec 2025 podcast

Well, it does in as much as those at the top are likely to inherit more.

The meek will not inherit the wealth of the Irish or other economies anytime soon.

And in that regard, actually, there's some very interesting central bank numbers out in the last month or so that say the wealth of the top 10% increased by about 15%.

in the year to the second quarter of this year.

And that's an 87 billion increase in the wealth of the top 10% in Ireland.

And if you take the bottom 50%, right, because a lot of those at the lower end aren't going to have any wealth at all, but the bottom 50%, it only increased by 6% or 7 billion.

So 87 billion for the top 10%.

7 billion for half the population.

And as you say, that is going to be transferred down the generations.

And it is something that is, you know, when we talk about the major pressing issues in the Irish economy, it's right to talk about climate change, demographics, you know, infrastructure.

Those are all areas.

But you have this

silent sort of problem emerging that is going to be significantly damaging over time because of that unequal situation.

And ultimately, because it tends to lead not only to a divided economy, but a fractured society, as you're seeing in the US and lots of other places, it probably will make the country far more difficult to govern and to do the right thing for the economy in five or ten years' time.

We have one of the best tax systems in the world in terms of redistribution.

We are far less unequal in terms of wealth and income.

And that's probably why I'm emphasising these are issues.

We can tackle it because we're in a situation where things are not perfect.

But they're far from the problems, the intensity you see in the US and elsewhere.

So if you deal with it now, it'll be easier.

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