The Failure Premium: Where is the Money Going?

This week, Sinead O'Sullivan is back, and she's got an answer that official Ireland really doesn't want to hear. We dig into the "failure premium", the staggering cost of a state that knows how to hand out subsidies but has forgotten how to coordinate, build, or own anything. We follow the money: why HAP quietly inflates the rent into the landlord's pocket, why housing a refugee costs €99 a night here and €13 in the Netherlands, and why we're paying premium prices for second-rate outcomes across housing, health, and infrastructure. We look at how a country adapts to dysfunction, sheds in back gardens, hollowed-out city centres, kids emigrating, until we stop noticing it's not normal. What happens when the multinational money slows down and we're left holding the infrastructure deficit we never fixed? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You can listen to The Failure Premium: Where is the Money Going? online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

The Failure Premium: Where is the Money Going? is an episode from The David McWilliams Podcast by David McWilliams.

This episode is 42:10 long.

This episode was published on May 5, 2026.

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