JobBridge, the Irish National Internship Scheme, was a labour activation measure launched in July 2011, during a period of extreme economic crisis, and was marketed as a chance for young people to gain career experience in quality work placements. Over 60 per cent of participants found employment after leaving the scheme but it suffered from high deadweight losses and was widely criticised as exploitative during its existence. This was quite predictable, which leaves the puzzle as to why JobBridge was designed without more regulations to protect the entry-level jobs market and the interests of the unemployed? This paper will trace the processes behind this suboptimal decision-making. First, it will show the institutional factors influencing poor policy decisions on labour activation. Then it will explain the main incentives behind an under-regulated programme, which were the need to develop a workable scheme as quickly as possible and to do this without significant funding. Finally, it will show how the decision-making process prioritised the interests of the Labour Party, government, business and the concerned parents of unemployed youth over the interests of the unemployed.
The connections between Irish politicians and the private sector are the subject of constant speculation, particularly in the post Celtic Tiger period. However, there is little systematic evidence whether publicised cases of such ties represent the exception to the rule, or if they are symptomatic of a larger problem. In this paper we focus on one aspect of the public-private nexus and investigate whether a revolving door -the movement of individuals between private and public sectors -exists in Ireland. Using evidence from originally collected data on former TDs from 1989-2016, we find that almost one third of ex-politicians are in the private sector; however, many merely return to their previous occupations as solicitors or small business owners. Still, eleven per cent turn to consulting, lobbying or corporate board membership. We find that former cabinet ministers, the representatives of FF and FG parties, as well as TDs who do not run and lose are more likely to join the corporate sector. We additionally compare former TDs with ex-officials in the civil service.Finally, placing Ireland in a comparative context, we find that the extent of the revolving door problem here is lower than in other democracies.
The anti-fascist movement is generally viewed as a reaction to the extreme right by concerned left-wing activists. Therefore we would not expect the Antifa to feature in countries where extreme right activism is not a feature of the politics. However, Ireland has no significant extreme right but it still has an anti-fascist movement that plays an influential role within radical left circles. By treating Ireland as an outlier in relation to the existing reactive explanation for anti-fascist mobilisation this paper takes a deviant case analysis approach to generate novel hypotheses behind the reasons for the anti-fascist movement.First, anti-fascism acts as a site of left convergence, an area of unity that transcends the usual ideological divisions that can impede other types of political collaboration in a fragmented radical left activist base. Second, in the absence of effective extreme right forces, anti-fascism acts as a form of prophylactic action. In effect, the aim of this activism is to deny political space to extreme right micro groups before they become a popular force or a more serious political threat. Finally, a close cultural lineage between elements within the left and a past revolutionary tradition will increase the appeal of anti-fascist activism among left-wing activists.
Active Labor Market Policies (ALMPs), which include state‐funded apprenticeships, have long been used as a way of encouraging unemployed youth into skilled and semiskilled trades. However, new forms of “nonstandard” employment are now dominating young people's experience of the labor market. In fact, unpaid internships are becoming a normal part of a modern curriculum vitae and viewed as a necessary rite of passage for a successful school‐to‐work transfer, especially in the middle‐class professions. Through the use of freedom of information requests, policy documents, evaluation reports, and semistructured interviews, this paper examines the role of unpaid internships in shaping the four most recent ALMPs targeted at Irish youth since the Great Recession (2008). It theorizes that the increased prevalence of unpaid internships in the entry‐level jobs market leads to Irish policymakers designing youth unemployment ALMPs based on a private‐sector unpaid internship model. This paper will first situate youth unemployment policy within the literature on ALMPs and unpaid internships. It will then combine process tracing as a within‐case research method with a comparative case study of the four ALMPs. In conclusion, this paper finds that Irish youth unemployment policy designed during periods of economic crisis tends to prioritize the needs of host organizations and mirror employment norms established through unpaid internships. Conversely, during periods of economic growth, the Irish youth unemployment policy reverts to a more regulated model that protects the entry‐level jobs market. Furthermore, this paper recommends that European states should prohibit the use of unpaid internships to avoid further entrenching precarious and discriminatory work patterns.
Ireland in 2022 saw the return of normal politics after two years of the pandemic. The ebbing of the health crisis saw the emergence or re‐emergence of new crises. The invasion of Ukraine had an impact on Irish politics as there was a surge of refugees accommodated in Ireland and an increase in inflation. The government introduced measures to mitigate the impact of the cost‐of‐living crisis, but the growing population and a lag in construction activity caused the housing crisis to worsen. None of what the government sought to do was able to mitigate these problems in the short to medium term at least. By the end of the year, the pressure the number of refugees had put on housing services led to anti‐refugee protests, hitherto unknown in Ireland. Ireland also saw a new Taoiseach (Prime Minister), though the government remained substantively the same following the planned rotation of the head of government.
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