News

  By Tony Lowes. 99% of the actively growing raised bog in Ireland has gone, with one third of the remaining 1% lost in the last 10 years     “I would like to draw your attention to the outright carnage bestowed on hundreds of acres of our historical raised bog lands in County Westmeath.” […]

By Gerard Cunningham Imagine you wanted to open a bookshop, but you knew nothing about books. You could research the book market professionally, find out who the best-selling authors are, or which genres do well. But maybe you’re lucky enough to know a lot of authors. So instead of extensive research, you ask your ten […]

By Ann Irwin. New legislation and changes to  funding arrangements, community development programmes and institutional structures are all sowing confusion and frustration among community organisations. The rhetoric behind these changes has been about bringing coherence to the community sector, avoiding duplication and ensuring value for money. So far the opposite has happened. Bringing about so […]

By Mary Murphy. The Department of Social Protection has contracted two private companies to deliver JobPath, a new activation programme for Ireland’s 178,000 long-term unemployed. This follows a tendering process supported by the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion in London. A British recruitment firm, Seetec, has been contracted to deliver these activation services in […]

Don’t forget the biggest lessons of the last 20 years (editorial Nov 2014) November’s Village contains several disconcerting pieces about the state of housing and the property market (Michael Smith on the new Planning Bill [p 26], Paul Newsome on our obsession with Landlordism [p38] and Ronan Lyons on the social imperative to reduce costs […]

Laura Harmon is on the phone when I meet her outside the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Trinity College. She finishes, apologises gratuitously, and we make our way into the Arts block to locate an empty lecture theatre. A sensor notes our presence and the lights beam into action as we find seats at a desk on […]

Denis has been busy while his senior billionaire colleague has been keeping his head down