Open Journal Systems Trinity College Dublin
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Change in Maternity Provision in Ireland: “Elephants on the Move”
Get PDFIn an attempt to understand how change can occur in health services this article focuses on two recent developments in Ireland which came about as a result of an unexpected event and a consequent shift in policy which as Hinrichs (2001) and Castles (2010) suggest can be slow to move. Drawing on path dependency theory this article argues that maternity policies in Ireland were “locked in” between 1951 and 2001 in the wake of the Mother and Child controversy, an infamous milestone which led policy to develop along a very specific path and institutionalised the medical model of childbirth which has since endured. During the subsequent fifty years, the size of maternity units increased as did rates of medical interventions. Numbers of women giving birth at home declined from over a third in 1950 to less than one per cent today. This locked in policy for over half a century until it was challenged at the next critical juncture in 2001 when the withdrawal of insurance from two maternity units in the North East of Ireland led to their sudden closure in a region which was the area of greatest population growth in Western Europe. This led to a major shift in the hard to move “elephant” of maternity provision with potential to change policy on a national level in Ireland
Identifying Childhood Deprivation: How Well Do National Indicators of Poverty and Social Exclusion in Ireland Perform?
Get PDFIn the context of the significance that the life-cycle has been afforded in social policy discussion in Ireland, current national measures of poverty and social exclusion have been criticised for failing to capture such phenomena accurately in relation to particular stages of the life-course. In this paper we have taken advantage of the inclusion of a special module on childhood deprivation in EU-SILC 2009 to create reliable measures of both household basic deprivation and childhood deprivation. Overall, our analysis leads us to the conclusion that those exposed to childhood deprivation are generally a sub-set of the children captured by population indicators. Adopting a multidimensional and dynamic perspective on household resources and deprivation enables us to capture the large majority of children exposed to childhood deprivation. Restricting our attention to childhood deprivation would lead us to miss out on a significant number of children living in households experiencing basic deprivation but not exposed to childhood deprivation. It would be unwise to assume that such deprivation has no consequences for children. While there is clearly a value in supplementing existing national measures with child specific indicators, it would not appear sensible to rely solely on the latter
The Transition from Short- to Long-Term Unemployment: A Statistical Profiling Model for Ireland
Get PDFThis paper develops a statistical profiling model of long-term unemployment risk in Ireland. We use a combination of administrative data and information gathered from a unique questionnaire that was issued to all jobseekers making a social welfare claim between September and December 2006 who were then tracked for eighteen months. We find that factors such as a recent history of long-term unemployment, advanced age, number of children, relatively low levels of education, literacy/numeracy problems, location in urban areas, lack of personal transport, low rates of recent labour market engagement, spousal earnings and geographic location all significantly affect the likelihood of remaining unemployed for twelve months or more. While the predicted probability distribution for males was found to be relatively normal, the female distribution was bimodal, indicating that larger proportions of females were at risk of falling into long-term unemployment. We find evidence that community based employment schemes for combating long-term unemployment have little effect as participants re-entering the register typically experience extended durations. Finally, we argue that the adoption of an unemployment profiling system will result in both equity and efficiency gains to Public Employment Services
The Socio-economic Gradient of Obesity in Ireland
Get PDFUsing the nationally representative SLÁN datasets for 2002 and 2007 we calculate concentration indices for the incidence of obesity for men and women. We find higher concentration indices for women than for men in both years, but that the gap narrowed over time with the index rising for men but falling for women. A decomposition of the concentration index suggests that the greatest contributions to the index for both men and women come from own selfassessed health, third level education and equivalised income
Increasing the State Pension Age, the Recession and Expected Retirement Ages
Get PDFIn March 2010, the Irish government announced that the age at which the state pension is paid would be raised to 66 in 2014, 67 in 2021 and 68 in 2028. One typical objective of such policy reforms is to provide an incentive for later retirement. The question we address in this paper is whether the expected retirement ages of Irish individuals aged 50 to 64 changed as a result of the policy announcement. The data we use are from the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA). Our findings show that there was no noticeable break in expected retirement ages before and after 3 March, 2010 (the day on which the policy announcement was made). Also during 2010, the economic news became increasingly bad as the full scale of the fiscal and banking crises in Ireland emerged. The data suggest that there was a reduction in the proportion of people planning to retire at age 65 after 30 September, 2010, the day that the full scale of the banking crisis emerged
Competitive Balance and Match Attendance in European Rugby Union Leagues
Get PDFThe paper analyses factors influencing match attendance in the three main European rugby union leagues using data for over 4,000 fixtures over 15 seasons. The effect of competitive balance on attendance at sports events has received considerable attention in the literature. We find that (short- and medium-term) competitive balance have a large and statistically significant effect. However, this effect is smaller in magnitude than the effect brought about by the other aspects of the fixture with the strength of the home team being the single most important influence on attendances
The Structure of Ireland’s Tax System and Options for Growth Enhancing Reform
Get PDFThis paper explores the structure of Ireland’s tax system. Considerable attention is given to GDP and GNP as measures of Ireland’s taxable capacity but how appropriate are either of these measures given the structure of Ireland’s economy and how does the structure compare internationally? The paper also examines the distribution of income tax and the threshold for the top marginal rate as a percentage of the average wage and identifies Ireland as an outlierinternationally in terms of the rapid progression to the highest marginal rate. Consideration is then given to the microeconomic and macroeconomic impacts of various forms of tax what lessons emerge from the literature in terms of growth enhancing reforms to the overall tax structures and how that might apply to Ireland. The results of simulations suggest permanent increases in GDP and employment from a revenue neutral shift from labour to consumption or property taxes
