Neighbourhood of strangers: AirBNB and the commodification of housing
Figures published by the Department of Housing this month indicate that the number of homeless people in Ireland has reached the 10,000 mark. Responding to the escalating figures, Minister for Housing Eoghan Murphy said that current housing policies ‘were working’, but that the nature of the housing crisis meant it could never be ‘turn[ed] around...
Not only the Rich: A Case for Fees
The evolving demands of the labour market, coupled with a policy push toward the creation of a ‘Knowledge Economy’, has led to the increasing expectation and prerequisite of a third level degree in the Irish jobs market. With the majority of Irish students pursuing a third level education on completion of second level, second level...
The EU and the Globalization Trilemma
In his work The Crisis of the European Union (2012 – reviewed for society.ie here), Habermas argued for the uncoupling of democratic procedure from the sovereign state, on the grounds that the power of nation states to control the forces that substantially govern the lives of their citizens (market forces, natural environmental forces, etc.) is...
Recovery, Growth and Politics: An Ocean Apart
The end of 2016 and the first quarter of 2017 have been rather good periods for financial markets worldwide, with Trump’s election gave investors new promises and hopes, with deregulation, investments in infrastructure and energy projects at the top of the list
Recovery, Growth and Politics: Draghi’s patience
In post-crisis Europe, and specifically in the Eurozone, economic recovery has been rather sluggish. The year 2009 sparked a small rebound, which was stopped in its tracks by the sovereign debt crisis of 2011. The situations lasted around two and a half years, after which another upward movement started, only to be curbed by mid-2014....
Conditional Cash Transfers: Alleviating the Present, Investing in the Future
The Irish social policy model, in particular when it comes to welfare provision, is generally categorised as Liberal in nature, taking a passive, ‘safety-net’ approach to welfare intervention. Such a system is intended to alleviate the risk of extreme deprivation, but keep public welfare sufficiently sparse so as not risk the creation of poverty/unemployment trap....
Integration v Assimilation: Flaws of Coerced Inclusion
Last week, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the state of Switzerland had the right to oblige a pair of Muslim parents to send their daughters to mixed swimming lessons. While the parents had protested that the requirement to send their daughters to mixed swimming lessons violated Article 9 of the European Convention...
Guaranteed Income: a Dream or a Solution for 2017?
In his 1967 book Where do we go from here, Martin Luther King wrote: I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income. This coming year marks the fifty year...
Brexit and the decline of the Rural Left
In the immediate aftermath of the Brexit result in June, articles were quick to apportion blame to demographic cohorts that enabled the unthinkable result to become reality. The old, the rural, the uneducated; each segment’s electoral naivety was roundly lambasted by those at the vanguard of ‘progress’ and ‘modernity’. The plethora of criticisms was neatly...
The European Pillar of Social Rights: A Timely Lifeline for the EU?
The march of far-right wing political parties across Europe, the recent Brexit, and the US Presidential election of Donald Trump - have all signalled a sweeping social disconnect and disenfranchisement on both sides of the Atlantic.
Parallelgesellschaften: Leicester Model and the Politics of Integration
The terrorist bombings in Brussels and Paris in recent months have brought a strong and at times xenophobic edge to the continuing discussion on immigration and the integration of minorities in Europe. While previous articles on this website have focused on the migrant crisis, this article looks at issues with regards integration of migrants in...
The Issues of General Election 2016: Healthcare
The healthcare system is an inefficient, two-tiered mishmash of public and private providers and clients, and is in urgent need of drastic change. This much all political parties are in general agreement on. However, approaches to resolving the failings and inefficiencies of the current system vary widely, from the private-provision orientated philosophies of Renua, to the...
