Search

The Irish residential property market is currently characterized by a considerable structural deficiency in housing supply compared to the underlying level of demand. The lack of housing has led to several economic and social problems in Ireland. The imbalance between supply and demand has led to both house prices and rents increasing faster than household incomes. Recent policy initiatives by the Irish Government have outlined plans for significant spending aimed at increasing the numbers of housing completions to tackle these issues. This paper examines the impact of government spending on housing supply using a structural econometric model of the Irish economy with a specific construction block. Within our econometric analysis, we compare the results of an economy wide versus a sector specific government stimulus on the property market. Our simulations suggest that, in order to achieve social and economic goals like increasing the number of dwellings and making housing more affordable by containing house price inflation, a targeted policy such as that described in the Irish Government's Housing for All plan may be preferable to an economy-wide stimulus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a centennial overview of the Irish economy in the one hundred years following partition and independence. A comparative perspective allows us to distinguish between those aspects of Irish policies and performance that were unique to the country, and those which mirrored developments elsewhere. While Irish performance was typical in the long run, the country under‐performed prior to the mid‐1980s and over‐performed for the rest of the twentieth century. Real growth after 2000 was slow. The mainly chronological narrative highlights the roles of convergence forces, trade and industrial policy, and monetary and fiscal policy. While the focus is mostly on the South of the island, we also survey the Northern Irish experience during this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The response to Brexit in Ireland needs to be considered in relation to the long-term and short-term histories of the relationship between Ireland and the UK. Brexit, or at least the farcical debate around Brexit, which coincided with the author's fieldwork, may have contributed to the process of decolonization by undermining certain expectations about the British that had been retained from the colonial period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the origins, impact and legacy of the Achillhenge, a concrete structure on Achill Island, Ireland. It highlights the economic conditions and urbanization of Ireland during the Celtic Tiger period, a name given to Ireland during its rapid economic growth during the years 1995-2007. It discusses the impact of the global financial crisis on rural communities and mental health of construction workers of Ireland in the year 2008.

The article addresses Deirdre Madden's Time Present and Time Past as a response to the demise of the Celtic Tiger economy in Ireland. Primary among the article's concerns are the ways in which Madden deals with issues such as debt and the uncanny; literary realism; the relationship between past, present and future; and the redemptive agency of the artistic imagination. Each of these preoccupations is situated within a broader international critical context, bringing post-Celtic Tiger Irish studies into conversation with literary criticism that focuses on the links between the fields of finance and literary fiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 2008 and 2015, Ireland undertook unprecedented and systemic public sector reforms in a polity not traditionally considered a prominent reformer. While some of these reforms comprised part of the loan programme agreement with EU and international actors, many others did not. This article argues that the crisis in Ireland provided a window of opportunity to introduce reforms that political and administrative elites had previously found difficult to implement. The authority of the Troika was invoked to provide legitimacy for controversial initiatives, yet some of the reforms went further than the loan programme strictly required. A number of these concerning organisational rationalisation, the public service 'bargain' and transversal policy coordination are considered here. Agreements were negotiated with public sector unions that facilitated sharp cuts in pay and conditions, reducing the potential for opposition to change. The reform effort was further legitimated by the reformers' post-New Public Management, whole-of-government discourse, which situated considerations of effectiveness and efficiency in a broader framework of public service quality and delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trade union density in Ireland has followed a similar pattern of decline to that of other Anglo-Saxon economies in recent decades. However, two factors make Ireland distinctive within this classification of countries, firstly the system of national social partnership that prevailed from 1987 to 2008, and secondly, the absence of a statutory route to union recognition. In this paper, we examine the extent to which a new piece of legislation, the Industrial Relations Amendment Act 2015, provides unions with a route to securing bargaining rights for workers and extends collective bargaining rights generally. We conclude that the Act represents a missed opportunity to offer mechanisms to secure rights for unions and their members capable of delivering collective bargaining to the non-union sector. We situate the paper within debates concerning the role of labour law in supporting workers rights to collective bargaining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some recent significant work has been carried out using 'big data' to analyse chronological trends within prehistoric Ireland, but these analyses are sometimes lacking in archaeological context. This paper hopes to bridge that gap by providing a chronological framework based on the settlement data from Bronze Age Ireland. It updates previous research and implements Kernel Density Estimates as well as providing a contextual discussion of the results. Five phases of settlement activity are apparent in the analysis. Settlement Phase 1 (2200-1700 BC) represents the tentative beginnings of visible domestic architecture. It sets the scene for a rapid rise and widespread adoption of visible settlement in Settlement Phase 2 (1700-1300 BC), a long phase of growth and sustained density which includes the origins of the nucleated village at Corrstown, Co. Londonderry. This is followed by a significant decrease in the perceptible level of settlement activity during Settlement Phase 3 (1300--1100 BC). In Settlement Phase 4 (1100--800/750 BC) there is a renewed increase in visible activity, although not on the scale observed during Settlement Phase 1. By Settlement Phase 5 (800/750 BC onwards) there is a significant collapse in visible settlement activity. This phasing is compared with the trends in other facets of the archaeological record, notably burnt mounds, trackways and hillforts. The remainder of the paper explores a variety of aspects of society--such as population change, changes in the subsistence economy, changes to the economic system as recognised within the metalworking corpus, and an increased importance of the sense of place and property--that should be addressed alongside the evidence from the domestic sphere presented here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over a century ago, Horace Plunkett began a debate about the role of religion in Irish development, pointing to what he saw as the economic shortcomings of Roman Catholicism. Thereafter, however, the debate waned, and only limited scholarship has subsequently investigated the significance of religion in Irish development, especially in statistical terms. In this article that lacuna is addressed, using a quantitative approach to examine the relationship between Roman Catholicism and economic and financial development in the post‐Famine era. Attention is directed to a variety of development indicators, namely, education, occupations, and commerce. By focusing on a selection of measures over time, it is possible to determine more precisely where differences, if any, occurred between the denominations and whether such differences changed over the period. The analysis reveals that Roman Catholicism tends to be initially negatively associated with more advanced development outcomes, but that this association weakens over time. As such, the results point to an economic convergence between Roman Catholics and Protestants, complementing historical evidence on an upward Catholic socioeconomic transition—a 'Catholic embourgeoisement'—in the post‐Famine era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the process of economic recovery and spatial regeneration following the 2007–2008 financial crisis in the Republic of Ireland. Focusing in particular on the place of the creative and media industries within these top-down logics of planning, zoning, and property development, the article points to the strategic mobilization of 'culture' since the crisis for various forms of continuous financial and spatial exploitation. Using the popular visualization of the 'ghost estate' phenomenon as a starting point, differing logics and affects of ruin emerge within the fore- and en-closed futures of crisis within the built environment. Governing bodies like NAMA continue to manage the 'recovery' in a state of continuous exception, ensuring that the processes of foreign direct investment and urban regeneration continue unchecked as the country careens deeper into a housing shortage. The article proposes using the same materials put forth by the corporations and planning bodies of the 'creative city' to analyze a point of violence and contention where public goods and culture become mobilized strictly for private profit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents political and economic data for Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in 2018, including trade activities, bilateral meetings with Great Britain, migration, and population.

The article presents a conversation with Mike McCormack, an award-winning writer and a lecturer in creative writing at the National University of Ireland, Galway. McCormack's conscious rearticulation of the West of Ireland as a site of experimental modes of incarceration, virtual imaginaries, and energy regimes, addresses imaginative aporias around Ireland's production of nature. His fiction can be interpreted in light of a theory of capitalism.

Ireland and Iceland, both (semi-)peripheral islands in relation to Europe's core hegemonic capitalism, once shared similar farming systems based on small holdings and rotational grazing. Today, however, agriculture looks increasingly different in each nation, for at critical junctures their agriculture policy decisions took radically divergent paths. This paper will examine Irish writer John McGahern's That They May Face the Rising Sun and the Icelandic novel Independent People by Hálldor Laxness as farming novels that ultimately stand as responses to these agricultural policies during the periods they were made. It will contend that, given each author's experience in farming, the novels must be read as acts of political intent meant to provide warnings against productivist policies and the loss of social and rural capital they generate. In connecting these works to the specific agricultural policies enacted and practiced at the time of their writing, a form of resistance will be brought to light that has been overlooked thus far in their registration as world literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the transmission of UK and global shocks to the Irish economy over the period 1922–79, using annual data for consumer prices and real GDP in a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model. UK aggregate demand and supply shocks have large and significant effects on Irish CPI, but smaller effects on Irish real GDP. A historical decomposition indicates that UK aggregate supply and demand shocks played a more important role than domestic shocks in the evolution of Irish CPI. In contrast, the evolution of Irish real GDP is driven more by idiosyncratic domestic shocks than by UK shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a retrospective investigation of the impact of the recent "great recession" on human resource management (HRM) in multinational companies (MNCs) in Ireland. Ireland represents a particularly fitting location within which to address this topic given its standing as one of the world's most economically globalized and MNC‐dependent economies and also because the country was very severely impacted by the global financial crisis. Using both primary and secondary data from a variety of sources, our analysis considers the impact of recession on HRM in MNCs, with particular focus on employment, pay and benefits, industrial relations, and the role of the human resource (HR) function. The findings suggest that HR practitioners played a central role in implementing a series of initiatives, many of which were operational in nature, to improve business performance. In so doing, we argue that practitioners in MNCs in Ireland behaved as archetypical "conformist innovators" during the recent recession, delivering operational HR responses to improve their organization's bottom line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a summary of the findings of the Sustainable Progress Index 2019. The Index is an annual publication commissioned by Social Justice Ireland which examines Ireland's performance toward implementing the Sustainable Development Goals and compares us to our peers and neighbours in the European Union (EU)15 (OECD, 2007). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global economy collapsed in 2007–2008. The Irish initially accepted harsh austerity when the economy tanked. Yet, when Ireland had the fastest-growing economy in Europe in 2014 and 2015, mass demonstrations, standoffs and clashes with police, and other forms of civil unrest occurred. In this article, I introduce the "Deprivation-Protest Paradox." Drawing on in-depth urban ethnographic work in a small Irish city and randomly sampled interviews at a series of seven national demonstrations in Dublin, Ireland, I illustrate the ways in which people were aware of a narrative of objective economic recovery in the Republic of Ireland but were not feeling it subjectively in their lived experiences. And this gap—between expectations and lived experiences—galvanized and legitimized protest and civic discontent. I discuss the implications of this paradox for developing a new theory of unfair economic inequality, democratic engagement, and social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article constructs new monetary aggregates for Ireland between 1840 and 1921. Three major findings are gleaned from the data. First, we find that the degree of monetization on the eve of the Famine was comparatively high. Second, we find an unprecedented monetary contraction during the Famine. Third, in contrast to previous research, we find that the failure of the Munster Bank in 1885 had ramifications for confidence in, and the stability of, the banking system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Salt was a common trading commodity in a post-medieval Europe of expanding horizons and populations. It was, however, expensive and laborious to produce in northern Europe and foreign supplies were vulnerable to disruption. Its importance was especially pronounced in countries such as Ireland, which failed to industrialize on the scale of Britain, and relied on its agricultural produce and exports. This paper explores the changing fortunes of salt in Ireland by examining a complex of sites at Ballycastle. In operation for three centuries, it was one of the more enduring and resilient sites of manufacture. The authors identify individual agency, innovation and legislation as key factors for its relative success. Conversely, the business was periodically jeopardized by social and political unrest, factionalism and incompetence. As part of the wider Atlantic world, Irish salt and salted provisions exploited emerging colonial networks of trade; however, these market forces perpetuated social inequalities with attendant risks to food security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Social disadvantage is often associated with worse child psychological adjustment which itself is implicated in educational failure and poor adult social position. The family stress model holds that the association between social disadvantage and psychological adjustment stems from the impact of economic pressure on parental mental health mediated through the parent/child relationship.Methods: We take advantage of a natural experiment offered by the 'great recession' in Ireland between 2008 and 2012. Structural equation models using causal modelling and Longitudinal data from the Growing Up in Ireland cohort study are used to test whether the experience of recession in families impacts on children's psychological adjustment and whether this occurs directly or is mediated by the processes identified in the family stress model.Results: More than 70% of families experienced a reduction in income between 2008 and 2011 and 26% reported cutting back on basics such as clothing and food. Family experience of recession was significantly associated with negative change in all of the components of the family stress model, particularly parental mental health. However, less than half of the effect of recession was mediated by the processes of the family stress model. Tests showed that a model with a direct effect of recession on child psychological adjustment provided a better fit to the data.Conclusions: Recession and economic pressure had a significant effect on child psychological adjustment, but only a minority of this effect was indirect via the mental health of parents and parent/child relationship. The family stress model only offers a partial account of the mechanisms through which economic hardship impacts on families and children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. The Irish Equestrian industry provides over 12,500 full time job equivalents contributing in excess of €454 million to the Irish economy annually. For such an important industry there is a paucity of information relating to equestrian injuries. Aims. The aim of this study was to determine the demographics, characteristics, and outcomes of equestrian related injuries presenting to the emergency department of a regional trauma centre in Ireland over the course of one year. Methods. Retrospective analysis of all 30,700 presentations to the emergency department (ED) of the Midland Regional Hospital (MRH) Tullamore in 2013 was performed to identify equestrian related presentations. Patient demographics, mechanism of injury, radiology results, management, and follow-up data were collected and analysed using Microsoft Excel software. Results. A total of 149 equestrian related presentations were identified during the study period. There were significantly more females involved in equestrian injuries than males (58% versus 42%). Falling from a horse contributed to significantly more presentations and admissions than any other cause. 36% of presentations were associated with a radiological abnormality. Types of injuries identified included skeletal fractures (27.5%), joint dislocation/subluxation (5%), concussion (12.5%), and splenic laceration/intraperitoneal haemorrhage (1%). Admission or transfer to tertiary care was required for 18% of equestrian injuries. Only 43% of presentations were discharged back to primary care from the emergency department. Conclusion. This study identifies a high incidence of morbidities associated with equestrian presentations. In addition we recognised populations at risk of specific injuries and described high-risk mechanisms of injury. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including intellectuals in 20th century, travelogue on economic history of Ireland and Irish American immigrants.

This paper analyzes the impact of broadband infrastructure, along with a range of other local characteristics such as motorways and other infrastructure, availability of human capital, and access to third-level educational facilities, on the location of new business establishments. The sample period spans the introduction and recent history of broadband in Ireland. The results indicate that the availability of broadband infrastructure is a significant determinant, but its effects may be mediated by the presence of sufficiently high human capital in an area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the sole exception of Iceland, the downturn in the Irish economy in 2007 and 2008 was the most severe of any experienced by an Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development member state. In Ireland, the crisis was widely understood to have five key dimensions: a banking crisis, a public finance crisis, an economic crisis, a social crisis and a reputational crisis. This article examines the political impact of that crisis, focusing in particular on the impact that austerity politics has had upon the evolution of the Irish left. The article traces the political responses to crisis inside and outside the Dáil and examines their potential to support the growth of anti-austerity politics in Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1970s the prevalence and duration of housing market booms has increased in developed countries as has the busts which followed them. These developments and particularly their occurrence in a large number of countries simultaneously were key contributors to the global financial crisis of 2008. The literature on this crisis has focused primarily on the role of mortgage markets and home-ownership in driving housing booms and busts and also on the countries which have experienced the strongest busts, particularly in the English-speaking world. Despite the large number of social rented dwellings in Western Europe, the role of this sector has been largely neglected in the literature as has developments in countries unaffected by the crisis. This article aims to address these omissions by examining the interaction of social housing and the housing market in Ireland, which experienced a spectacular housing market boom in the 1990s, and bust in the 2000s and Austria which has a long tradition of housing market stability. It argues that social housing played an important but contrasting role shaping the housing market dynamics in these two countries. In Ireland social housing was pro-cyclical—it accelerated the housing market boom and intensified the bust; whereas Austrian social housing had a counter cyclical impact on the housing market and thereby helped to promote price stability. These outcomes were partially reflected in the different social housing policy regimes in use in these countries—Austria represents a ‘unitary’ and Ireland a ‘dualist’ housing regime in Kemeny’s (From public housing to the social market: rental policy strategies in comparative perspective, Routledge, London, 1995) typology. In addition, the sources of finance for social housing and the demand-side or supply-side orientation of subsidies were also important drivers of these contrasting outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Irish economy has recovered at an impressive pace from the economic and financial crisis that lasted from 2008-12. Nonetheless, as a small open economy with some lingering vulnerabilities from the recent crisis, the economy remains heavily exposed to potential adverse shocks. In this paper, we explore the possible impact of external shocks on the Irish economy. We model the shocks in a two-stage process: first using NiGEM to estimate the impact on Ireland's key trading partners and the broader international environment and then examining the effect of these changes in the COSMO model of the Irish economy. The paper focusses on three relevant risks facing the economy: the potential for a hard Brexit, an increase in interest rates and a depreciation of the sterling euro exchange rate. Using this two-step approach allows us to demonstrate the transmission of external shocks to the Irish economy. The results help to quantify the potential impact on future growth, the labour market, public finances and the financial system of some key risks materialising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates smart city (SC) initiatives in the context of re-using vacant property, focusing on the role of living labs (LL). LL utilise Lo-Fi technologies to foster local digital innovation and support community-focused civic hacking, running various kinds of workshops and engaging with local citizens to co-create digital interventions and apps aimed at ‘solving’ local issues. Five approaches to LL are outlined and discussed in relation to vacancy and gentrification: pop-up initiatives, university-led activities, community organised venues/activities, citizen sensing and crowdsourcing, and tech-led regeneration initiatives. Notwithstanding the potential for generating temporary and independent spaces for transferring digital competences and increasing citizens' participation in the SC, we argue LL foster largely a form of participation framed within a model of civic stewardship for ‘smart citizens’. While presented as horizontal, open, and participative, LL and civic hacking are rooted often in pragmatic and paternalistic discourses and practices related to the production of a creative economy and a technocratic version of SC. As such, by encouraging a particular kind of re-use of vacant space, LLs are used actively to bolster the Smart City discourse, as part of the more general neoliberalization of urban political economy. We discuss these approaches and issues generally, drawing on previous fieldwork and with respect to a case study of Dublin, Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the literary criticism to the books "TransAtlantic" by Colum McCann and "On Canaan's Side" by Sebastian Barry. Topics mentioned include the text of McCann's book that addresses the economic crisis in Ireland, the reflections on the risk of physical labor of Irish immigrants in the U.S., and the difference in style and ideological orientations.

Ash dieback, caused by Hymenoscyphus fraxineus, is developing rapidly across the island of Ireland. Ireland's ash (Fraxinus excelsior L.) woodlands, particularly first rotation plantations, are quite unique and are at particular risk of very rapid decline. Urgent action is required in order to minimise the economic, ecological and social impact of the disease. However, for this to happen forest owners require guidance regarding potential positive management interventions. This article outlines the wider, mainly European, experience of remedial silviculture. It presents three case studies on existing remedial silviculture trials in Ireland. In the absence of silvicultural research data specific to the evolving situation with ash dieback, this article explores the potential benefits of positive practical actions which may minimise the impact of the disease. Despite the seriousness of the situation, such silvicultural activity may even result in a positive economic outcome. It is hoped that by beginning to document potential mitigatory management options, this paper may bring some reassurance to owners and managers of ash-dominated woodlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Irish forestry sector faces a wood mobilisation challenge as many forest owners do not engage in forest management. Simultaneously, demands for biomass continue to increase to meet the requirements of national and European policies regarding the use of renewable sources of energy. First thinning operations in Ireland are normally conducted through Cut to Length (CTL) practices. In this study, Integrated Thinning (INT), a practice that procures woody residues in addition to the conventional roundwood assortments, was evaluated as an alternative, leading to higher profits that may increase forest owners' engagement with management. This study was part of SIMWOOD, a European project aiming to increase the mobilisation of wood from forests and woodlands in Europe and assessed the sustainability of INT in the south and east of Ireland. Results include geographic datasets describing harvesting operations at the forest areas of interest, soil damage and nutrient loss risks, and distance to the nearest biomass end users. It was found that c. 42,000 ha of forests had reached a suitable age for first thinning, of which c. 22,000 ha were on soils where INT could be conducted. Additionally, 99% of the area where INT could be implemented was less than 50 km from the nearest biomass end user. To increase wood mobilisation INT appears to be a useful alternative to CTL; however, its sustainability depends on site- and stand-specific variables and also depends on other aspects not considered in this study, such as weather conditions or market drivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]