Wage Setting and Wage Flexibility in Ireland

This paper presents results from a survey of Irish firms which was carried out in late 2006 and early 2007.

A Woman’s Model For Social Welfare Reform

The National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI) commissioned this research because of its concern that the social welfare system continues to deny women full independence. Even now, in 2003, the system reinforces a notion of women as adult dependants, rather than as individuals entitled to benefits in their own right. Furthermore, the social welfare system fails to give adequate recognition to women’s unpaid caring work. The consequences of this failure are the higher-than-average risks of poverty experienced by certain categories of women who are, or have been, engaged in caring work for long periods, particularly lone parents and older women. We are seeking in this research to advance a model of social welfare reform that promotes the economic independence of women within the social welfare code and enables individual (non-derived) rights to social welfare. The NWCI strongly advocates a rights approach that recognises economic independence within the family as an essential precursor to realising full citizenship rights for women in society. This definition emphasises the need for personal freedom and independence as a fundamental principle underpinning a rights approach to equality

Low road or high road? The post-crisis trajectory of Irish activation

Comparatively slow in adopting any clear activation strategy, postcrisis Ireland crossed the Rubicon and rapidly took steps to implement a work-first labour activation strategy. The article maps and examines the interaction of three variables – ideational influences, political interests and institutional processes – to assess the nature of post-crisis Irish activation policy. Troika imposition of aid conditionality, the ideational role of the OECD and domestic elites worked to shift the focus of Irish activation policy and its implementation. Post-crisis Irish activation is less influenced by social democratic versions of high-road activation than neo-liberal managerial stock management and conservative behavioural controls. These converge into a low-road model of activation. There is some demand for, but little articulation of, an alternative policy that could be centred around less conditionality and more focus on demandside issues including low pay, quality work, distribution of employment and removal of barriers to employment

Working-aged people and welfare policy

The maxim ‘a job is the best route out of poverty’ and the language of ‘working-aged’ are now firmly rooted in antipoverty and social inclusion discourse. Elsewhere, however, this concept of ‘working-aged’ has been ideologically contested. To suggest that someone of working age can work may also be interpreted as suggesting they should work. As Levitas observes, the language of working age constructs social exclusion as ‘non-participation in the labour market’ (2001, p. 451). She concludes there are anti-poverty implications when a priority focus on labour market attachment exists without parallel strategies to enhance welfare generosity for those who remain without employment or to examine wider ethnic and gender structural inequalities in that labour market and implications for care and other unpaid work. A policy that aspires to all working-aged social welfare claimants having an attachment to the labour market has therefore very important anti-poverty, rights and gender implications. These will be discussed throughout this chapter. The chapter is divided into two parts. The first examines how the concept and definition of ‘working-aged’ has evolved and then explores recent key changes, continuities and challenges for particular subgroups of the 18 to 66 (or working) age group: the traditional ‘unemployed’, people with disabilities and different groups of women including lone parents, qualified adults (wives and partners of social welfare claimants) and carers. This part concludes by defining the working-aged population and examining the changing composition of the working-aged at risk of poverty. The second part of the chapter examines the policy responses to joblessness. The focus is on five distinct but overlapping policy areas: welfare adequacy, making work pay, improving the quality of employment, enhancing family-friendly employment and activation strategies. The chapter concludes by considering the institutional reforms necessary to achieve the National Action Plan for Social Inclusion 2007–2016 (Ireland, 2007) targets and whether such targets offer hope to people of working age

What do we need for a Second Republic? High Energy Democracy and a Triple Movement

This article discusses the prospects of Ireland emerging from crisis renewed and reformed as a second republic. Evidence from opinion polls and surveys confirms Irish citizens value key republican principles of equality, rights and fair distribution; however, trust in politics, government and non-government organisations is low and the 2016 general election confirmed the absence of leadership to create political momentum around such values. The answer to the question of what is needed to generate a new politics or a high energy democracy lies in understanding how the crisis has impacted on values and attitudes towards key leadership institutions and how it has changed Irish political and civil society. Examining the relationship and linkages between the two allows some assessment of Irish political and civil society’s capacity for a values-led discourse that could promote a transformative-type change. We identify the absence of effective framing, a necessary prerequisite for effective linkage and mobilisation. What is required for a new politics is an Irish triple movement which incorporates gender and social reproduction, as well as environmental and traditional distributional concerns about income equality and public services. Such framing offers potential to mobilise across a wide range of actors and create a livelier battleground in which the interests of a much wider section of the population can find expression, create new alliances, reshape power relations and, over time, create a second republic

Review of \u3ci\u3eFaces of the Frontier: Photographic Portraits from the American West, 1845-1924\u3c/i\u3e by Frank H. Goodyear III, with an essay by Richard White and contributions by Maya E. Foo and Amy L. Baskette

The rise of photography in the United States coincided with the spread of Manifest Destiny, and this handsome exhibit catalogue presents a veritable photographic who\u27s who of the men (and a few women) who were pivotal actors in both the conquest and representation of the American West. The National Portrait Gallery organized the exhibition, Faces of the Frontier, in 2009, with travels to the San Diego Historical Society and the Gilcrease Museum in 2010. The book consists of essays by curator Frank H. Goodyear III and Richard White and the portraits themselves, accompanied by biographical captions. Four thematic sections divide the images: land, exploration, discord, and possibilities. The first image, fittingly, is of President James K. Polk, architect of midcentury expansion; the last is of Karl Struss, a Hollywood cinematographer who worked for Cecil B. DeMille. For the most part, these are well-known figures and often well-known photographs: the stereograph of George Armstrong Custer with a dead grizzly bear or very familiar prints of Sarah Winnemucca and Annie Oakley. But there are also some arresting, unusual photographs: a portrait of John Brown looking like an elderly history professor; photographer F. Jay Haynes, swaddled in fur clothing, icicles hanging from his moustache, phlegmatically taking notes on the wonders of Yellowstone; on facing pages a sober-visaged Sam Houston in an exuberant checked waistcoat and William Walker in a velvet-collared coat looking meek as milquetoast

Chapter 4: The emerging Irish workfare state and its implications for local development

This TASC publication argues that globalisation not only impacts global flows of trade, finance and investment, it represents a major challenge to both the Irish state and community stakeholders at the most local level

Making Ireland a Caring and Equal Society

This article argues that 'an ethic of care' needs to be at the heart of a new model of development. It discusses the need for limits and boundaries on the degree to which care and love can be or should be provided through market rather than social relations. Acknowledging that market provided care has increased women's emancipation, this article asks how this new model of development can reconcile a society that values both reciprocal care relations and women's equality. It concludes that a new development model should promote a carer-worker model for Ireland's future. Care, in its broadest sense, extends to love and solidarity. Citizenship, education and public spaces are important practices through which we can develop the type of solidarity needed to underpin a society that has a real ethic of care for each other and a global solidarity with humanity

Careless to Careful Activation : making activation work for women

For many people activation, helping people move from welfare to work, is like mother hood and apple pie and therefore difficult to argue against. However badly designed activation policy and/ or poorly implemented policy can have unintended and negative consequences. This is particularly so for women. They struggle to move from a familial welfare system, which still reinforces women’s role as carers and risk moving into a still gendered and segregated labour market where women are more likely to work in low paid, part time and precarious work. This implies many potential traps. In the worst case scenario activation could force women into a triple lock where domestic work, care obligations and low paid employment combine to decrease quality of life and standard of living

'Principle of revenue neutrality' proves Government's lack of vision

The average percentage of GDP spent on social protection in the EU-15 is 27.5% (Eurostat, 2007) . The Irish rate of 18.2% compares badly with high spenders France (31.1%) and Sweden (30.7%), with our nearest neighbour the UK at 26.4% but also with countries like Greece (24.2%) and Portugal (25.4%). Ireland, to make any meaningful social or economic progress, should be moving toward a higher percentage of GDP on social protection