Human Rights in Ireland

Rory O’Connell of Queen’s University Belfast Law School has set up a website which will be of interest to people teaching UK or comparative constitutional law. The website includes a chronology of events and sources relevant to constitutional law. The resource focuses on evens in UK constitutional history though also includes references to Irish, European, International and comparative developments.

The chronology is intended to help students in a number of ways. Read Full Post »

The publication of a highly critical report regarding the refusal by a Munster post-primary principal (identified only as School A) to admit a young mother by the Ombudsman for Children and Young People conveys both acutely negative and positive messages. Read Full Post »

The rioting in Tottenham, Brixton, Hackney and now parts of Liverpool, Bristol and Nottingham are the product of a complex mix of long- and short- term factors. One that few have mentioned is the shutting down of the places that have hitherto tried to help young people – the group that has taken the lead role in the violence following the shooting of Mark Duggan – deal with their day-to-day problems. In Haringey – the original locus for the disturbances over last weekend – for example eight of its thirteen youth clubs closed down between December 2010 and June 2011. Read Full Post »

To be GOVERNED is to kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, estimates, valued, censured, commanded…at every transaction [to be] noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished.

It is…to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then at the slightest resistanced…to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured (Proudhon [1851], 1923: 294)

The above quote, part of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s 19th century revolutionary demands, leaves little to the imagination. Proudhon’s anti-establishment writings launch a remorseless assault on government – or, more accurately, governance – as anti-freedom and an Read Full Post »

Following Tuesday’s Prime Time report on the deplorable condition of Ireland’s social housing stock, the Minister for Housing and Planning, Willie Penrose tried to defend the fact that NAMA’s ‘social dividend’ had still not emerged by commenting that “regeneration is more than bricks and mortar”. From Minister Penrose’s perspective, this counts as a satisfactory response. The failure of successive Governments to protect social housing tenants from the suffering acute effects of poor living conditions adequately is because housing policy is complicated. So complicated in fact that it’s about more than just housing.

Aside from the ridiculousness of such a pithy response, it is also paradoxical given Minister Penrose’s proposals for resolving the social problems associated with housing. Read Full Post »

Like most children of the 1980s, the Moriarty Tribunal (or the Tribunal of Inquiry into certain payments to Politicians and Related Matters) has been a bit-player throughout my politically formative years. Barely pubescent, my personal definition of ‘tribunal’ when Moriarty was convened in 1997 was a mish-mash of speeches by Disraeli and judgements by Pontius Pilate. I did not own a mobile phone, had only a vague knowledge of Esat, had never heard of Denis O’Brien and (rather embarrassingly) had paid no real attention to Minister Lowry other than to mentally place him in the “culchie” box (a world apart from the infinitely more cultured, cosmopolitan North-East). Read Full Post »

The next election is expected to change Ireland’s political landscape. The leading parties’ proposals include plans to dissolve the Seanad, decrease the number of TDs, to extend the number of working days of the Dáil and massive public service reform. But despite the political grandstanding over institutional reform – apparently it’s a necessity and will save the world - to date there has been very little said about what this means exactly. Apparently there are serious discussions to be had but public sector reform is not one. Read Full Post »

Children and young people have been one of the biggest losers in Minister Lenihan’s ‘austerity budgets’ and Budget 2011 is no different. With predicted “savings” of €307m from the Education and Skills budget, €765m from the Health and Children budget and reductions in Jobseeker’s Allowance, Supplementary Welfare Allowance (for the 22-24 age bracket) and Rent Supplement payments, yesterday’s budget has augmented the problems children and young people already struggle with. The diminished financial support available to young people leaving second-level education will serve to restrict the opportunities available to many, forcing them (and their parents) to make very difficult decisions regarding their future prospects. Read Full Post »

Echoing the sentiments of the majority, the general tone of the pre-budget submissions for Budget 2011 ranges between fear, anger and schadenfreude. But though the overarching message is the same, there are distinct differences between the requests.Within the calls to ring-fence funds for homeless services and protect the most vulnerable, lowest-earning members of Irish society, there are arguments for reducing the burden on businesses through restructuring public funding and introducing property-related taxes as an additional source of revenue. While the Consultative Committe of Accountancy Bodies – Ireland (CCAB-I) condemns investment in job-creation schemes as “misguided” , the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) argues that “we need new initiatives and greater urgency on job protection and creation”. As the Irish Small and Medium Enterprise Association describe “realistic” reduction of the deficit as inseparable from expenditure cuts, ICTU use the growing deficit as an example of why “austerity budgets” which cut expenditure do not work. Read Full Post »

Following through on their election promise to “make work pay”, Iain Duncan Smith, the UK’s Minister for Work and Pensions has unveiled proposals for a radical reform of unemployment benefit policy. The reforms are aimed at resolving a perennial problem of the benefit system – that sometimes employment does not pay. According to the coalition government, the new programme will remove the “artificial barriers to employment” and reduce the number of jobless households in the UK by 300,000. Central to the reform is a ‘claimant contract’ where benefit claimants who reject job offers will be penalised by the withdrawal of their benefits. Additionally the range of benefits under the existing system will be replaced by a “Universal Credit” combining the numerous forms of financial support currently available to the out of work.

What is interesting about Duncan Smith’s proposals, and what could soon be replicated in the up-coming budget in Ireland, is the combination of structural change and cyclical expectations. It is a mish-mash of new Con-Dems and old Tories. Read Full Post »