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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?