Legal and historical analysis of the Government of Ireland Act 1920.

Announcement that the system is to be dismantled should be treated with scepticism. Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan announced at the weekend that Government policy is now to move towards the abolition of the system of direct provision. Taken at face value it is the most significant step in that direction in 20 years but should be treated with scepticism. One could be forgiven for believing that this was just another pretence of Government concern to quell growing societal objections to direct provision.

Some infrastructure is experiencing a fast rate of deterioration as a result of poor design/ construction/ maintenance or more demanding loads than anticipated, and many buildings, transport, and energy infrastructure are getting close to the ends of their design lives. There is a need for assessing the safety of these structures, i.e., to check that the probability of the structural response falling beyond an established threshold for a given period of time is acceptable. This calculation involves defining a number of input variables that include loading as well as structural properties such as moduli of elasticity, material strength, geometry, boundary conditions, etc.

Following the release of the film 'Philomena',  the light has been shown on the untold stories of Irish American intercountry adoption.  As the year of the gathering 2013 draws to a close, the people involved should be help to have their own gathering. This will not be achieved by many unless urgent  goverment and religious organisation action is provided to help people in families seperated through adoption to find one another.

Der Abstimmungserfolg vom Sonntag, 3. März, fand in ganz Europa Beachtung. Die Presse kommentierte prägnant: «Ren­­tenrevolution!» Und: «Deutlicher konnten die Eidgenossen fast nicht zeigen, dass in ihrem einst so sparsamen und wirtschaftsliberalen Land neue Zeiten angebrochen sind», schrieb die «Süddeutsche Zeitung» über den deutlichen AHV-Abstimmungserfolg des Schweizerischen Gewerkschaftsbundes.

Bei ihrem Amtsantritt als Präsidentin der EU-Kommission versprach Ursula von der Leyen eine sozialere EU. Tatsächlich brachte sie einige soziale EU-Gesetze auf den Weg: etwa die Mindestlohnrichtlinie oder die Richtlinie zu Lohntransparenz und Lohngleichheit (work berichtete). Auch für die Rechte von Kurierinnen und Chauffeuren der digitalen Plattformen wie Uber oder Deliveroo schlug sie eine neue Richtlinie vor.

Company directors are faced with many dilemmas, which mean making difficult or awkward decisions, often on subjective issues. A dilemma has been defined as a "choice between two (or, loosely, more) alternatives either of which is (or appears) equally unfavourable”. Shades of Grey: Directors’ Dilemmas published by ICAS builds on the work of ICAS’ Ethics Committee in Shades of Grey: Ethical Dilemmas, which dealt with ethical dilemmas facing professional accountants.

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a widespread national problem. Evidence indicates that in between one-quarter to one-third of all cases the perpetrator is a juvenile sex offender. In the Republic of Ireland there are only 4 juvenile sex offender treatment programmes staffed by interagency, multidisciplinary teams. These teams have developed rigorous assessment and treatment procedures. The programmes take account of the multifactorial causation of juvenile sexual offending and the need to involve families and a variety of agencies in helping these youngsters develop more productive lives and avoid recidivism. There is a need to develop and evaluate similar programmes in each region of the country.

Le 24 avril 2013, l'immeuble industriel Rana Plaza s'est effondré au Bangladesh, provoquant la mort de 1100 ouvriers et ouvrières du textile et 2000 blessés. Le 21 novembre de cette même année, une tragédie s'est également produite en Europe avec l’écroulement du centre commercial Maxima, inauguré en 2011, dans le quartier de Zolitūde à Riga (Lettonie). Bilan: 54 vendeuses, clients et secouristes ont perdu la vie; 41 autres personnes ont été blessées.

Until recently, European elites firmly rejected the need for any coordination in the field of wage bargaining, because the market would automatically lead to the desired (downward) convergence of wages across Europe. In 2011, however, Commission President Barroso announced 'a silent revolution' (EUobserver, 16.03.2011) that led to the adoption of the 'six-pack' on European economic governance by the European Parliament and the Council. As a result, the Commission not only obtained effective tools in order to control member states' budgets and economic policies, but also the right to issue enforceable maximum national labour cost increase benchmarks.

Two Animal Health Farmer Education Articles in the Irish Farmers Journal

Irish Government must ensure any future British Bill of rights and responsibilities must, at least for North, reflect minimum rights protections under European Human Rights Convention

The circumstances surrounding a proposed initiation of a referendum on Bulgaria’s entry date to the Eurozone are symptomatic of the country’s rule of law decay.

Opinion: the use of prediction marketplaces could help us all to make sounder decisions.

A large number of small-medium sized earthen platforms are present on the steep slopes surrounding the Upper Lake at Glendalough. These have been known about since the nineteenth century, and surveys in the late Twentieth century identified about 100 in total. Charcoal was frequently observed where these were disturbed.

Despite floods and strikes of all sorts, a few hundred of us gathered in the Swift Centre at St. Patrick’s Hospital in James’s Street on December 7th and 8th to attend a ground breaking workshop presented by Dr. Christine Padesky, Director of the Centre for Cognitive Therapy in California and leading international expert in the field. The first day of the workshop dealt with basic skills in cognitive therapy and on the second day the focus was on a new protocol for working with clients with recurrent problems.

There are a number of clostridial diseases that affect cattle and sheep in this country. They are generally characterised by acutely ill animals (sick very suddenly) that are often found dead or die within 24 hours of the initial signs of illness. The prognosis for almost all clostridial diseases is extremely poor, with mortality approaching 100% in most cases. Therefore, the most important thing with clostridial diseases is prevention.

Animal Health Farmer Education Article in the Irish Farmers Journal

Having been designed and built to offer shelter for a single boat, the revenue cruiser, Fethard Dock is diminutive in scale, measuring approximately 30 meters in width by 60 meters in length, and had been described as Ireland’s smallest harbour in an early 20th century survey.13 The harbour, as currently configured, consists of a quay and two piers, one L-shaped, in addition to slipways outside the structure on each side, the eastern slipway likely a more recent addition. The smaller north-west pier is of a scale that suggests it is more properly described as a groyne, a structure intended to offer additional shelter to a harbour rather than a platform for landing goods. There had also been a watch house on this groyne structure, later removed, in addition to private warehouses on the quay previously owned by the local Lynn family, now in ruin.

Peter G. Rowe, in his treatise Civic Realism, describes a good civic work to be dependent not only on the manifestation of the familiar, the pluralistic and the critical, but is also “inextricably bound up with the continual advancement of the expressive means by which it is made and elaborated.” The strength of Cardew’s work on purely urban grounds–the resonance each project develops with the given environment through a profound understanding of the social and cultural aspirations of the communities it both serves and neighbours–is undeniable. But just as apparent throughout the portfolio is an indelible trace of material and structural imperatives, which seem to inform the work in equal measure to his very evident social objectives. So to view this body of work in an isolated fashion from a theoretical construct regarding society or from an equally isolated position of the relevance of making to design is to fail to grasp the totality of the work. The two forums, that of social theory and that of making, are here inexorably linked and interdependent–a truly civic body of work.