This paper argues a basic income system could transform the means of income redistribution and social empowerment in society, and move us decisively towards the egalitarian principle of giving everyone equal access to the conditions to live a flourishing life. Basic income is a universal non-conditional payment, paid at the same level to everyone regardless of income or wealth. The paper considers basic income as a transformative strategy from a number of perspectives: economic, social, cultural and environmental, and then considers basic income as an alternative and transformative idea for Ireland. It presents three potential pathways in which it could be implemented and elaborates and provides full costings on how one such proposal could be funded and concludes it is affordable, feasible and politically viable in Ireland today.

This paper contributes to the existing literature on carbon leakage by using a range of different publically available datasets in order to develop a systematic approach for identifying whether products are potentially at risk of carbon leakage. The scope of this paper focuses on the cement and aluminium sectors at different levels of product aggregation to demonstrate the variation in trade patterns that exist over time. The evolution of EU-28 trade flows with third countries for these sectors between 2000 and 2016 enables the selection of key third countries that could warrant further investigation via more quantitative techniques in order to determine the impact of carbon pricing on trade patterns. This systematic approach could be replicated for additional sectors in further research as part of a more regular assessment to provide evidence of carbon leakage for European industry. No evidence of carbon leakage is found in this paper for clinker and cement, while there is no conclusive evidence for unwrought non-alloyed aluminium and aluminium products.

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