For over two centuries, the patronage of primary education schools in Ireland has been almost exclusively the sole preserve of the Christian churches. While this may have been justified in the past as merely representative of the religious beliefs of the Irish population, this argument no longer holds true. Irish society has undergone momentous changes, [...]

The identification of offenders as members of a criminal gang is generally not an essential criterion in the prosecution of offences. It is not therefore possible to ascertain the precise number of criminals who are members of criminal gangs operating in this country. Nor is it possible to provide statistics of the kind sought by [...]

The news reports in Friday’s papers, if any, on the launch on Thursday of the Report of the Gender Recognition Advisory Group will certainly contain the news that the law will be changed to allow transgendered people have their new gender legally recognised in Ireland. They might also contain information on concerns that have been [...]

Human trafficking is always a popular news item, but the coinciding of a number of stories about it over the past fortnight has raised an interesting point that usually gets lost in the hysteria: the ambiguity of the term itself, and how it can easily be stretched or narrowed to cover or exclude certain phenomena, [...]

Housing policy is one of the issues that goes to the heart of our current economic crisis. More than health or education it is an area of policy that successive governments left to the mercy of the market.
Some of the consequences are widely acknowledged, such as the massive property bubble and subsequent house price crash.
Unfortunately [...]

“… one in five Irish women who have ever been in a relationship experience physical, emotional, financial or sexual abuse.” (Margaret Martin, Director Women’s Aid)
The recent launch of the annual statistics report for 2010 by Women’s Aid on domestic violence serves once more to highlight the continuing abuse inflicted on so many women in Ireland [...]

TASC launches major new report on ‘Eliminating Health Inequalities - A Matter of Life and Death‘(pdf)
Today TASC is launching its first report on health inequality, which was written by health policy analyist and journalist Sara Burke and Head of Policy at TASC Sinéad Pentony.
It’s an important piece for work for anyone who has followed the [...]

Michael Burke has a highly informative post on Socialist Economic Bulletin which shows that the delivery of public goods, such as health care, education, housing, transport, infrastructure and services like post and banking, are more effective and is more efficiently provided when done through a public rather than a private entity. While Michael uses the [...]

I am coming to the conclusion that even the most progressive of political parties are stalling.
I know that there are very sound people working away at policy positions and that the left still manage to oppose the worst excesses of the continuing neo-liberal onslaught, but it seems to mean that the problem remains that we [...]

Annually for the past nine years, the UK Department of Health have issued statistics showing a decline in the numbers of women giving Irish addresses when accessing abortion services in Britain. The 2010 figures, released earlier this week, revealed that 4,402 women gave Irish addresses to British clinics when they accessed abortion services - 12 [...]