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Ireland had, for a long time, been an outlier in European politics in that, despite having experienced large‐scale immigration in the 2000s, it had not seen a significant expression of anti‐immigrant sentiment, and it was almost absent at a political level. The year 2023 saw a significant rise in the number of people seeking international protection or asylum. The state struggled to cope with the rise in numbers, which saw it take control of hotels and other private premises across the country. Protests grew in some localities, but the political reaction was negligible until in late November, there was a riot in Dublin city centre causing millions of euros worth of damage. There was an expected impact on Irish politics that might change the shape of politics in Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some policies fail to achieve their goals and some succeed. More often than not, it is unclear whether a policy has been a success or a failure, sometimes because the goal was not clear, or because there were a multitude of goals. In this introduction to this special issue we discuss what we mean by policy success and failure, and assume that policy success or failure is ultimately the result of the decision-making process: policy success results from good policies, which tend to come from good decisions, which are in turn the result of a good decision-making process. We then set out a framework for understanding the conditions under which good and bad decisions are made. Built upon factors highlighted in a broad literature, we argue that a potential interaction of institutions, interests and ideology creates incentives for certain outcomes, and leads to certain information being gathered or prioritised when it is being processed. This can bias decision-makers to choose a certain course of action that may be suboptimal, or in other cases there is an absence of bias, creating the possibility for making successful policy choices.

We know that the Dáil is dominated by the government. From 2010 to 2016 there was a clamour for change, which ultimately led to significant reforms of the Oireachtas, and specifically the Dáil. In this article we show that the basis for the weakness of the Dáil was the government’s control of the legislative agenda. This article tracks the changes that were made, and we make an early assessment of them. However, firm conclusions are difficult to draw because of the extent to which the strengthening of the Dáil is a function of the weak position of the current minority government.

Ireland in 2022 saw the return of normal politics after two years of the pandemic. The ebbing of the health crisis saw the emergence or re‐emergence of new crises. The invasion of Ukraine had an impact on Irish politics as there was a surge of refugees accommodated in Ireland and an increase in inflation. The government introduced measures to mitigate the impact of the cost‐of‐living crisis, but the growing population and a lag in construction activity caused the housing crisis to worsen. None of what the government sought to do was able to mitigate these problems in the short to medium term at least. By the end of the year, the pressure the number of refugees had put on housing services led to anti‐refugee protests, hitherto unknown in Ireland. Ireland also saw a new Taoiseach (Prime Minister), though the government remained substantively the same following the planned rotation of the head of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of radiology in the teaching of anatomy to medical students is gaining in popularity; however, there is wide variation in how and when radiology is introduced into the curriculum. The authors sought to investigate students' perceptions regarding methods used to depict and teach anatomy and effects of integrated radiology instruction on students' abilities to correctly identify imaging modalities and anatomical structures on radiological images. First-year medical students completed questionnaires at the beginning and end of the first academic year that incorporated ten hours of radiologic anatomy teaching in the anatomy curriculum. Questions used a combination of Likert scales, rankings, and binary options. Students were tested on their ability to identify radiology modalities and anatomical structures on radiology images. Preresponse and postresponse rates were 93% (157/168) and 85% (136/160), respectively. Postmodule, 96.3% of students wanted the same or more radiology integration. Furthermore, 92.4% premodule and 96.2% postmodule agreed that "Radiology is important in medical undergraduate teaching." Modality and structure identification scores significantly increased from 59.8% to 64.3% (P?

The political year started and ended with surges in Covid‐19 cases dominating the political world, business and citizens' lives. Caution at the end of the year was probably determined by what had happened at the start of 2021, with a surge in deaths from Covid‐19 damaging the government's reputation and its parties' support. Other more normal issues also started to return to politics, which made 2021 a more typical year of government versus opposition, with the main opposition party gaining support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Party leaders are often regarded as crucial to a party's success. Successful leaders tend to be big personalities who dominate their party's organisation, policy development and electoral campaigns. But does that control come with a price? We test to see if such leaders damage their parties in the medium term. This happens because strong leaders might be ceded too much control of the party organisation, policy and electoral strategy. We specifically hypothesise that political parties will go through a period of leadership instability and electoral decline after strong leaders step down. Using a dataset with elections under party leaders in nine countries over a 25‐year period, and a qualitative case study, we find some evidence for the theory, which should prompt further research of the question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ireland inspite of the rise of the radical or extreme right parties in Europe has no radial right party and the reasons for the same are presented. Special circumstances prevent nationalist parties in Ireland from presenting overtly anti immigrant platforms.

A detailed account of the election for the Irish lower house, Dail Eireann, which took place on 24th May 2007, is provided. The winner was Fianna Fail, which maintained its parliamentary support and returned to government.

John Garry, Niamh Hardiman, and Diane Payne, editors, Irish Social and Political Attitudes. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006. 192 pages. GBP 50.00. Few countries in the world have undergone the [...]

Background: The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected radiology services around the globe. The impact of the crisis on radiology education in Europe has yet to be determined, in order to identify measures to achieve optimal training of radiologists during pandemics. The aim of this survey was to evaluate the impact of the pandemic on young radiologist members of the European Society of Radiology (ESR). Methods: A survey consisting of 28 questions was developed and distributed using SurveyMonkey to all ESR European radiologist members in training. The survey sought to collect information on three main themes, 'demographics', 'training level' and 'effects of COVID-19'. The responses were statistically analysed with the use of R programming using descriptive statistics. Results: A total of 249 responses from 34 countries were collected. Specific training on COVID-19 was not offered to 52.2% (130) of the participants. A total of 196 participants were not redeployed to other specialities but only 46.2% of institutions allowed residents to work from home. E-learning was offered at 43% of the departments and most participants (86.2%) were not allowed to switch from clinical work to research. A minority (n = 13) were suspended with (30.8%) or without salary (38.5%) or were forced to take vacation/yearly holiday leave (7.7%) or sick leave (23%). Almost half of the participants did not have access to personal protective equipment and a minority of them had their financial status affected. Conclusions: The ongoing SARS-CoV-2 outbreak has significantly affected all aspects of postgraduate radiology training across the ESR member countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: How do surges in female representation in public life affect media coverage? Can the media underrepresent the reality of women's progress? If so, is the source of underrepresentation the media itself or social elites that interact with the media? Methods: Using automatic content analysis, we study two remarkable step changes in women's role in public life in Ireland: the 2016 elections and 2012 Olympics. Results: The increase in female participation was associated with a new and substantial gender gap in coverage, which we attribute to the media, not other elites. Conclusions: We cannot assume that media coverage will increase proportionally as women advance in public life. The reemergence of bias when female representation jumps may also exist outside the media in any context where there are large numbers of decisions about whether to favor males or females. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deliberative democracy is for many the most significant development in democratic theory in the last 50 years and it has been used in some places to solve real-world policy problems. However, measuring the impact of deliberative methods is not clearly achievable because several independent variables are manipulated simultaneously. One of the main goals of deliberation is opinion change and thus it is important to understand why opinions change. This paper utilises comparison groups in order to isolate the impact of deliberation from information in the deliberative process. We outline the results of a quasi-experiment in which deliberation took place in a citizens' assembly (CA) in Ireland. As part of this we measured the impact using pre- and post-test controls, including a group given the information the CA participants received, but without the deliberation. The results of the analysis provide evidence of a separate deliberation effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing literature which argues that courts are effectively legislators. As a result, political leaders have an incentive to control judicial decisions by appointing justices whose policy preferences are as close to their own as possible. For this reason, in many countries judicial appointments to the highest courts have become highly politicised. This can be for a number of reasons. One is the ideology of the Justices, the other is their strategic incentives. Irish parties display small ideological differences, but deep partisan ones. We could expect partisan heritage to have an impact on judicial decisions. We test this expectation on Ireland, a common-law country with, it has been argued, one of the most activist judiciaries in the world, and a highly politicised and partisan appointments’ process. Ireland is therefore a country in which we would expect partisan heritage to be reflected in judicial decisions. We analyse over 5,000 decisions of the Irish Supreme Court and despite rigorous testing we find no evidence of partisanship in decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is generally thought that leaders are important for the performance and activities of political parties. In Fianna Fáil those leaders usually hold the office of Taoiseach, allowing Fianna Fáil to set the agenda for, and react to, changes in Irish society. We investigate the extent to which the individual choice of leader might make a difference. We assess the political and policy management of Fianna Fáil’s leaders using a series of counterfactual case studies for each leader to enable us to establish how these leaders shaped the party and the country. Taking account of the traits of the specific leader while assessing the context in which they led, and using evidence from interviews, memoirs, and a wide secondary literature, we find that in some cases the leader was instrumental in bringing about a change in direction that was unlikely to have taken place under anyone else’s leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on political party Fianna Fáil in Ireland and mentions topics such as political ideology of the party, Irish party system and political leadership in the party.

When badly hit by the same global financial and economic crisis in the early 2000s, the Irish and the Greek societies reacted in quite different ways. Whereas Ireland remained largely acquiescent and displayed a high degree of civil compliance, Greeks took massively to the streets using violence and attacking specifically the state and the state personnel, a phenomenon we refer to as “political Luddism.” It is shown that the two countries are quite similar in terms of their economic condition, cultural background, social composition, ideological profiling, and party system dynamics, among other factors. What, then, explains the two countries’ dissimilar reactions to crisis? Through a detailed analysis of the cases, the article offers evidence that the most compelling explanation relates to the varying ability of the Greek and Irish states to continue providing basic public goods and other state-related services to their respective societies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article tests a theory to explain particularistic political spending not normally used on parliamentary systems. Using constituency-level data, we evaluate the merits of theories predicting whether parties reward their core voters or target floating or swing voters to maximise the party's electoral return. In order to bring new insights into the process of parliamentary pork in a system which incentivises garnering a personal vote, we introduce the decision-making rule (ministerial autonomy) as a variable and argue that the level of ministerial discretion in allocating funds coupled with the electoral system's incentives leads, in Ireland, to a form of distributive authoritarianism where the interests of ministers trump those of their party. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Media coverage of elections in Europe and North America has increasingly focused on the campaign as a game rather than a policy debate. This is often explained by the changes in media pressures. It may also reflect the narrowing of policy space between left and right and the comparative prosperity enjoyed in Europe and North America. But the relevance of policy varies. The global economic crisis might have led to an increased interest in policy among voters and focus on it by media. Ireland experienced both extremes of boom and crisis between the late 1990s and 2011. The Irish case allows us to test the impact of the crisis on media framing of elections. This article uses original data from the three most recent national elections in Ireland, with a research design that holds other pertinent variables constant. We find empirical support for the theoretical expectation that the context of the election affects the relative focus on campaign or horserace vs. substantive policy issues. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the relationship between different ownership types in broadcast news to determine the portrayal of election coverage as a strategic game against a focus on policy issues. Using a content analysis of six television and radio programmes during the 2011 Irish general election, we test hypotheses about differences in coverage provided by public service programming with equivalent private sector coverage. Our findings improve upon two key aspects of earlier research on game-policy frames. First, we show that commercial outlets can produce content that has democratic value, and suggest that before reaching definitive judgements not only it is necessary to distinguish between radio and television programmes but it is also advisable to study individual programming on each medium. Second, in a key market segment, we show that there is a clear distinction between editorial choices on policy content between public and private radio. These findings suggest that policy-orientated private programming may react to factors such as a culture of public service broadcasting as well as regulatory interventionism. We also suggest that there are cases where policy-rich private programming is driven by different editorial values from its public counterpart which can benefit the public. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Distributive spending by a state is often thought to have an electoral connection, and the work on pork-barrel politics whereby spending is geographically targeted is extensive. However, there has been mixed empirical support for the two main hypotheses: (a) that it is targeted at marginal constituencies; or (b) that it goes to party strongholds. Using new data on discretionary sports grant spending in Ireland we offer and test a complementary hypothesis that focuses on the responsible minister as primary decision-maker. We find that the grants are targeted at the responsible minister's constituency. Moreover we test these using three measures of the dependent variable: euro value of the grants, success rate of grant applications and the number of grants allocated per constituency. Our hypothesis is supported in all three models, something we argue gives greater credence to the result. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We present a novel method which can be used to show that contemporary party systems may originate much further back than is usually assumed or might be expected – in reality many centuries. Using data on Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, jurisdictions with party systems that differ significantly, one of which poses significant challenges to the universality of many political science theories, we show how using surnames as markers can confirm the obvious explanation for the Northern Ireland party system and then propose a novel explanation for the Irish party system. We suggest that surnames could be an objective way of studying migration patterns and ethnic heritage which may be important in explaining party systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Few parts of Europe see as much religious observance as Northern Ireland, and fewer places in Europe have religion as one of the major cleavages on which politics seems to rest. In this article we argue that although religion is an important identifier, it acts as a reinforcer of ethno-national differences rather than as an intrinsically important difference itself. Religious differences while often symbolically important rarely emerge as points of real conflict in Northern Irish politics. It has had little impact on the ongoing process of democratization in Northern Ireland. We review an array of evidence which supports this conclusion. However, we find that religion still has a power to divide and so makes a political settlement less likely than an accommodation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The framing of elections represents the most overt instance of the media’s power to influence politics. We content analyzed twelve newspapers’ coverage of the 2011 general election in Ireland. Ireland’s newspaper market has some special advantages for social scientists, as it allows us to separate the newspaper types/formats (tabloid vs. broadsheet) from their commercial basis (vulnerability or otherwise to short-term sales and profits). Therefore, we are able to make a particular contribution to the long-standing debate about the interaction of free market capitalism and the media. Our results do not find a homogeneous general election frame in Ireland. The variation in framing across Irish newspapers was much greater than that between the five countries for which we can find strictly comparable results. The different commercial statuses of the newspapers do seem to be related to different dominant frames of election coverage, but only after we develop a new measure that takes account of the relative overall prominence of election coverage in the newspapers examined. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Whereas there is an obvious ethnic explanation for the deep divisions between the nationalist and unionist communities in Northern Ireland, Ulster Protestants are often treated as a uniform group. It has been noted that there are more than two ethnic traditions in Northern Ireland; academics have distinguished between British Unionists and Ulster Loyalists. This is also linked to a divide in party support within the Protestant community. These two groups, it has been suggested, may have ethnic or religious bases derived from different migrations to Ulster in the last 400 years. The proposition is tested on surname data that have been shown elsewhere to allow us to see through the ‘fog of history’. Evidence is found to support the ethnic explanation for divisions between the nationalist and unionist communities, but the ethnic explanation for the divisions within unionism is rejected. This leaves a continuing puzzle for scholars as to what explains the two traditions in Northern Ireland's Protestant community. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]