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...
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....
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...
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...
The Issues of General Election 2016: Housing
Five years after the 31st Dáil was elected on the backlash of the property crash, housing remains one of the most contentious issues in the run up to General Election 2016. Different housing approaches have been taken over the course of the state’s existence, with each holding specific benefits and downsides to its social stakeholders....
‘Why should surfers be fed?’ Unconditional Basic Income in Ireland
With a General Election imminent, testing social issues are sure to be voiced readily over the coming months in both party manifestos and general public discourse. One topic that will certainly take centre stage in the upcoming debates is the issue of social deprivation and how to best combat economic poverty in a state still recovering...
Individualistic Homelessness: Housing the roofless
While decriminalising drug possession is a simplistic and ultimately self-defeating approach (a topic to be addressed in a future article), it must also be realised that incarceration is not a suitable response to dealing with social problems such as narcotic abuse, and will ultimately only succeed in increasing rooflessness, itself a gateway to narcotic use....
Part-time work: lessons from the Polder model
In the cases of Ireland and the United Kingdom, the welfare of workers is largely evaluated on the basis of occupational status and earnings. The implication of this is that part-time jobs are widely regarded as sub-standard jobs, deviating from the ‘norm’ of full-time work by which worker welfare and self-actualisation are often measured. Indeed,...
Housing: replacing the wobbly pillar
The recent election of Joan Burton as the 11th leader of the Labour party brings hope to its members of a change in the fortunes of their party which faced an electoral nightmare in the local and European elections. But comments made by Burton that ‘a Labour priority in the remainder of this Government’s term would...
