Yuppie Kvetch? Work-life Conflict and Social Class in Western Europe. WP239. May 2008

Recent debates on time-use suggest that there is an inverse relationship between time poverty and income poverty (Aguiar and Hurst, 2007), with Hammermesh and Lee (2007) suggesting much time poverty is ‘yuppie kvetch’ or ‘complaining’. Gershuny (2005) argues that busyness is the ‘badge of honour’: being busy is now a positive, privileged position and it is high status people who work long hours and feel busy

Work Rich, Time Poor? Time-Use of Women and Men in Ireland

Are we running out of time? This paper uses data from a recently completed time-use survey in Ireland to consider whether the recent employment growth has led to high workloads, time-pressure and a lack of free time. We examine levels of total committed time, that is, time spent on employment/education, unpaid work (caring and household work) and travel, across different groups in the population. We find high workloads among the employed and those caring for young children and adults. High levels of committed time are found to be associated with greater subjective feelings of time-pressure. Our evidence suggests that recent employment growth is likely to have contributed to time poverty and feelings of time-pressure.

Factors influencing the downstream transport of sediment in the Lough Feeagh catchment, Burrishoole, Co. Mayo, Ireland

Research laboratories in the Burrishoole catchment have been the focus of salmonid research since 1955. One aspect of the research has been to monitor the number of salmon and sea trout migrating to sea as smolts and returning to the catchment as adults. In the early 1990s it became clear that the smolt output from the catchment had declined over the previous two decades. At about the same time the presence of fine particles of peat silt in the hatchery became increasingly apparent and led to a higher incidence of mortality of young fry. These observations and management difficulties led to a study of silt transport in the surface waters of the catchment, which is described in this article. The authors describe geology, soils, climate and hydrology of Burrishoole before examining the sediment deposition in Lough Feeagh

A biologically inspired spiking model of visual processing for image feature detection

To enable fast reliable feature matching or tracking in scenes, features need to be discrete and meaningful, and hence edge or corner features, commonly called interest points are often used for this purpose. Experimental research has illustrated that biological vision systems use neuronal circuits to extract particular features such as edges or corners from visual scenes. Inspired by this biological behaviour, this paper proposes a biologically inspired spiking neural network for the purpose of image feature extraction. Standard digital images are processed and converted to spikes in a manner similar to the processing that transforms light into spikes in the retina. Using a hierarchical spiking network, various types of biologically inspired receptive fields are used to extract progressively complex image features. The performance of the network is assessed by examining the repeatability of extracted features with visual results presented using both synthetic and real images

Ethnicity and Nationality in the Irish Labour Market. ESRI Research Series, 2018

This report presents a more in-depth analysis of discrimination in the labour market to ascertain if certain ethnic groups experience higher rates of work related discrimination than others. Using data from the Equality module of the Quarterly National Household Survey and the Labour Force Survey, this report examines if labour market outcomes differed across ethnic groups between 2002 to 2014. It also examines the likelihood of being employed rather than unemployed for different ethnicities, and the grades of employment secured

Physical Activity of Park Visitors in the Sacramento-Central Valley

The purpose of the study was to conduct a secondary analysis of the socio-demographics and physical activity levels of park users in the Sacramento-Central Valley region from the 2012 California Opinions and Attitudes Survey on Outdoor Recreation. The study was delimited to the parameters of gathering information via a telephone survey during 2012. The major conclusions indicate: a. the subjects are mostly White or Hispanic, middle-aged to senior status, married, and are part of the lowest socio-economic status, b. park visitation differs between groups as Hispanics visit more often and Non-Hispanics stay longer, and c. physical activity levels differ between groups as Hispanics are more vigorously active than Non-Hispanics. Recommendations include: to continue relevant services and update services in need, to promote/market physical activity to the segmented groups, and to collaborate with public health agencies

European Survey Data on Attitudes to Equality and Human Rights Technical Paper. Research Series

This report maps the data available on attitudes to equality and human rights issues in Ireland collected in European surveys over the period 2000 to 2018. These surveys provide a rich source of evidence for researchers and policymakers in Ireland. We identify a total of 1,509 relevant questions from a search of over 125 attitude surveys. These questions are categorised according to the groups and topics addressed. We find that attitudes towards minority ethnic/nationality groups, gender/gender roles and social welfare recipients are the most widely covered. Questions on attitudes towards religious minorities, age groups/ageism, family status, disability and sexual orientation are much less common. Moreover, while the frequency of attitude questions relating to sexual orientation has increased over the period, questions on age and disability groups have declined. Within these equality groups the surveys cover a range of topics including social distance, social contact, tolerance and policy preferences

Work-life conflict in Europe. ESRI Research Bulletin 202101 February 2021.

This bulletin summarises key findings on factors associated with work-life conflict in Europe from a body of research, mainly using large representative surveys, over the past 20 years

POLICY AND PRACTICE TARGETING THE LABOUR MARKET INTEGRATION OF NON-EU NATIONALS IN IRELAND. ESRI RESEARCH SERIES NUMBER 89 JUNE 2019

Increases in immigration inflows to both the European Union (EU) and Ireland between 2014 and 2016, due in part to the ‘refugee and migrant crisis’, have resulted in an increased focus on integration policies, outcomes and measures, including in the area of labour market integration. Employment is crucial for the integration of migrants into the economic and social life of their host country, so labour market integration is a very important part of integration policy (European Commission, 2016). In recent years, many Member States have updated existing labour market integration policies or have developed new ones. Ireland, like the majority of EU Member States (EMN, 2019), pursues a policy of mainstreaming service provision in the area of integration, with targeted initiatives to meet specific needs. This study first considers labour migration policy, which manages and shapes overall access of non-European Economic Area (EEA) nationals to the Irish labour market.1 Under the employment permits system administered by the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation (DBEI), non-EEA nationals may apply to access the Irish labour market. The report then looks at specific policies and measures which aim to improve labour market integration for non-EU nationals living in Ireland. The focus is on labour integration measures for regularly staying non-EU nationals with a right to work. Measures specifically targeting non-EEA students, graduates, asylum seekers and beneficiaries of international protection are beyond the study scope. The effect of general labour market and social policy provision in Ireland on labour market integration is also outside the scope. Examples of public and private sector practices are discussed together with examples of community sector practices that receive public funds