Austerity in Ireland has meant tax rises: over €4,000 per household since 2011. The biggest contribution was from a household charge/local property tax. LPT largely replaces volatile stamp duty revenues which withered away during the crisis as transactions collapsed. There were also large increases to pension levies, liquid wealth taxes (interest, capital gains and inheritance taxes), social insurance, VAT, alcohol excise and the cost of operating motor vehicles. In contrast, current government spending has stayed level overall. Savings in social welfare through higher employment and benefits cuts paid for spending increases elsewhere. Capital spending has been cut as bank recapitalisations stopped.
Based on that (the section on local and central government expenditure starts at page 20), the biggest contributions seem to have come from increased income tax revenues - in particular the Universal Social Charge (USC) - and from VAT revenues. LPT is a smaller contributor overall; although, because it is based on assumed property values, it will be more important in the Greater Dublin Area and other cities where house prices are higher. (In contrast, water charges will hit relatively harder than LPT in areas where property prices fell sharply in the crash and have staged no significant recovery and on private and social housing tenants who are not liable for LPT.)
The "spending increases" have been almost entirely to pay interest on debt repayments, just in case anyone thinks that the populace have started living it high on the hog. Most other current expenditure has remained static or decreased.
