News

By Gerard Cunningham. Newspapers have grown used to the idea that they face an existential threat from the digital world, even if they haven’t quite figured out what to do about it.  But for a long time broadcasters, in particular radio,  thought they could be different. The truth is that, behind the chipper periodic press […]

By Lorna Gold. Academics, policymakers and NGOs met in early April at the Royal Irish Academy to examine how Ireland’s new foreign policy, ‘Global Island’, can be put into practice. The striking thing about this policy is an extraordinary clash between the two key sections: that on ‘Our Values’ which establishes a framework of values […]

By Niall Crowley. Political and media outrage is strangely hard to direct and seemingly impossible to sustain. There was a lot of it about, though, when ‘Prime Time’ did its exposé of Aras Attracta in Mayo and the inhumane treatment of people with intellectual disabilities there. The Taoiseach led the way with: ‘This was frightening, […]

By Sorley McCaughey. Tax policy poses options to prioritise one sector of society over another. As with all choices, there are inevitably winners and losers. Professor Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, has firmly linked tax policy with human rights. He has posed this challenge squarely in the Irish context. […]

To: New Left Government From: Tom Healy Date: March 2016 Re: Priorities to improve the economy and living conditions The danger, now, is that many lessons of the crash of 2008 and what led up to it have not been learned and mistaken policies are being pursued. One clear example of this is the widespread […]

By Deirdre Murray. International-development NGOs discriminate against women even though their remit is to promote women The “glass ceiling” is alive and well in the business sector in Ireland. A survey carried out by the Irish Times (2014) of the Top1000 Businesses in Ireland found that only 25% of the c-suite jobs (jobs with the […]