I am delighted that I provoked you into a response! I have to say that I feel a whole lot better about being on here now. I am playing with fire on two or three blogs - big reps abounding! - but I am really enjoying it. I may well get burned, but it's a risk I have to take. I was stagnating here.

Yes, this whole thing, as lovely as it sounds - is fraught with problems. The cost is the main one. I did some "back of the fag packet" maths last night and I reckon it would cost about €40bn to give all adults in Ireland a €10k UBI, and it really depends on how you view that amount. On one hand, a footballer (Neymar) signed for a French football club last year, and the transfer fee and subsequent wages totals about €500m, or 1/80 of what it would cost to implement UBI in Ireland.

But of course, money doesn't work like that. Another (and far more salient) way of looking at it is that the annual budget to run Ireland is about €65bn. How on earth would they find an additional €40bn (actually quite a bit less if you remove pensions and welfare) to fund this?

It can only come from the rich, and I think that they might have a thing or two to say about that.

It would be a huge leap to get here.

SAs problems are many, I'm sure, and I am certain that any given country would have similar (if distinctly different) issues. I fear this is little more than a nice idea.