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Thursday, Mar 11th 2010


Articles Covering Social Welfare

Taking the Country & Western out of Pensions: The Recession Diaries - January 22nd

Life can sometimes be like an American country and western song:
‘My girl friend left me / my dawg bit me in the leg / my mamma joined the army / and my sister is in jail . . . but with the Lord’s help, I’ll carry on.’
Even the most collective minded of us accept [...]

Living on the Edge: Millions of Irish People Will Struggle to Pay Bills as Recession Deepens

Nearly half of the population would struggle to pay an unexpected bill of €1,000 in the next twelve months, according to a new Eurobarometer study. Forty-five per cent of Irish respondents to the Europe-wide survey indicated that there is a high or moderate risk that they would be unable to cope with such an unexpected [...]

Ireland’s Welfare Provision: A European Perspective

The European Anti Poverty Network (EAPN) Ireland) recently published a factsheet for members on ‘Social Welfare: How Ireland Compares in Europe, which challenges some of the myths and misinformation on social protection spending in Ireland. In this article, Niamh O’Grady, Research Assistant, challenges the view that Ireland’s social welfare and protection levels are among the [...]

ILR Notice Board: Protests, Petitions, and Reports

There are a number of things that have been brought to my attention recently, so to cover everything I’m going to give each of them a short mention.
No To NAMA
Tomorrow, the 12th of September there is a demonstration being organised to protest against the implementation of NAMA.
From the No to Nama facebook page:
“The voice of [...]

The Great Squeeze: The Recession Diaries - August 8th

The Government now has its bookends. On the expenditure side, the McCarthy Report; on the taxation side, the Commission Report. Now we can stack the economy between the two and . . . squeeze. The only problem is that one of the bookends may not be so reliable. Indeed, it may fall off the bookshelf. [...]

 
 Brendan Hayes on the Commission on Taxation Report: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (78)

Social Welfare Debate: What It Really Boils Down To

Over on Progressive Economy Michael Taft provides his second thorough examination of the data on social welfare and the arguments behind the demands for cuts in the forthcoming budget (part one here). He looks beyond the payments themselves and includes the other benefits in kind, including rent supplement, school and clothing allowances, and medical cards [...]

NAMA. The McCarthy Report. Bailouts? Confused? You will be.

Does the thought of NAMA concern you? And is the economic crisis and the proposed part solution, the McCarthy Report, a source of anxiety? Are you a bit puzzled as to the rhetoric surrounding it, after all the principals involved seem somewhat hazy on precisely what the effects of the implementation of both those will [...]

Here We Go Again: Our ‘Lavish’ System of Social Welfare Spending

‘There are people who are working right now, who are looking at the possibility of losing their jobs, they cannot save, they cannot build up the savings to cushion potential loss, or potential risk of their job.  And, yet, they are paying increasing rates of taxation in order to sustain what is in effect, as [...]

Social Welfare Payments and the Price of Bananas in Belgium

So, Sarah Carey has apologised to Irish Times readers for deceiving them about Irish social welfare payments being the ‘most generous in the EU’, and made a correction in her column, saying, as Michael Taft argued, that they are not even ‘among the highest in the EU’, as the document she used to base the [...]

May 25th Afternoon: The Recession Diaries

Boy, was Senator Fergal Quinn taken in. Or was he? In his recent column, ‘Getting people work a priority’ he attempts to make two real-life comparisons - one based on a letter he received and one from what he read in the paper. Senator Quinn forgot the first universal rule of life: don’t believe everything [...]

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