A Suitable Place to Remember? Derelict Magdalen Laundries as Possible Sites of Conscience in Contemporary Ireland

It is less than a decade since the Irish government published the McAleese Report, which accepted the state’s role in facilitating abuse in Catholic Church-run Magdalen Laundries. At the time the then Taoiseach Enda Kenny tearfully apologizing for the state’s involvement, alongside promising redress for survivors. Although much has been achieved since that time, one aspect that has not been resolved is how we remember and memorialize that past. Of the 10 Magdalen Laundries that operated in postindependence Ireland, seven have been demolished or substantially redeveloped and three are currently in various degrees of dereliction. This article considers the potential for extant Magdalen Laundries to become sites of conscience. It will explore this potential through the lens of temporality, materiality, and spatiality and will ultimately argue for the need to explore scalar power relations if Magdalen Laundries are to truly reflect past injustices as well as become meaningful places in the contemporary.

Examining the Prospects for Developing a National Child Maltreatment Surveillance System in Ireland

The Irish Government pledged to reducing the prevalence of child maltreatment under the WHO Regional Committee for Europe plan on reducing child maltreatment. As a first step towards a rights-based and public health approach to maltreatment prevention, the WHO plan recommends making child maltreatment more visible across the region, with better surveillance through the use of national surveys that use standardized, validated instruments. We review the policy context, present current Irish data holdings, and outline some of the complexities reported in the literature concerning various surveillance methods in the context of the proposal to establish and maintain a surveillance system for CM in Ireland. Conclusions highlight the need for Ireland to adopting an approach to surveillance as soon as it is feasible. The paper outlines how such a programme is necessary to address the current absence of evidence on which prevention policies can be developed and to compliment the current child protection system. Drawing on a review of current methods in use internationally, we outline options for an Irish child maltreatment surveillance programme.

Triumph and concession? The moral and emotional construction of Ireland's campaign for abortion rights

In March 2018, the Irish government confirmed that a referendum would be held on 25 May, allowing for the Irish public to vote on the legalisation of abortion. The same month, Together for Yes – the national civil society campaign advocating for a ‘Yes’ vote in the referendum – was launched. This article draws upon findings from 27 in-depth interviews conducted in December 2019 and January 2020 with Irish abortion activists, to explore the moral and emotional construction of abortion within the ‘Yes’ campaign. This research suggests that the ‘Yes’ campaign, which secured 66% of the votes cast in the referendum, framed abortion as a negative affective object and constructed the moral permissibility of abortion along rather conservative lines. Data from the first year of abortion provision in the Republic of Ireland reveals that abortion seekers still face huge obstacles in accessing services in the State. The legislation introduced in January 2019 allows abortion on request only until 12 weeks, whilst issues remain in relation to the refusal of care. This article, therefore, concludes that by framing abortion in conservative terms, the pro-choice campaign has not yet succeeded in destigmatising abortion in Ireland – an issue now translated into limited legislation and inadequate provision of services.

The Irish government and physical education in primary schools, 1922–37

This article examines the treatment of physical drill as a curricular subject in primary schools in the Irish Free State in the period from 1922 to 1937. In particular, it assesses the reasons why its status as an obligatory subject was reduced in the mid 1920s. It will show that the availability of facilities, resources and teaching staff with suitable qualifications were all considerations, while some teachers were not physically capable of teaching the subject in the early years of the Irish Free State. In addition, a strong emphasis on the Irish language and the view that a reduced curriculum was more beneficial to learning meant that some subjects, including physical drill, were deemed optional. However, the decision to reduce the subject's status had not been supported by everyone and it was mainly the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation which was behind the move. Following its reduction from an obligatory subject to an optional one as a result of a decision taken at the Second National Programme Conference in 1926, a lack of a clear policy on the subject became evident. By the early 1930s, the subject was receiving more attention from the Irish government, which made some efforts made to integrate the Czechoslovakian Sokol system into Irish schools. In examining conflicting views on how to implement the Sokol system, and the work of Lieutenant Joseph Tichy, the man recruited to develop it within the Irish army, this article also identifies the reasons why this method of physical training was not a success in Irish schools.

Introducing evidence into policy making in Ireland

This chapter discusses how in recent decades Ireland has increasingly used empirical evidence in policy making. Ireland has favoured an evidence informed approach to policy making, as opposed to an evidence based one, as this integrates empirical evidence with an acknowledgement that other factors that matter in policy making are not readily quantifiable. The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has played an important role in the process of integrating evidence into policy making through the provision of high-quality datasets. The chapter also examines the investments being made in the skills sets needed to analyse the vast quantities of data available today and reviews the evolution of Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service (IGEES) in this regard.

How to Lose (and Regain) 3.6 Billion Euros

This chapter imagines a conversation between two senior civil servants when they realize that the Irish government has lost 3.6 billion euros through a spreadsheet error. The Assistant Secretary of the Department of Finance reports to the General Secretary that the accountant was not sure how to classify a loan to the Housing Finance Agency (HFA) from the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA). They had assumed that it might be adjusted for elsewhere in the General Government Debt calculations, but it was not. As such, the government debt appears twice in the national accounts, once as an asset for the NTMA and once as a liability for the HFA. The General Secretary then asks why the data entry error was not picked up. The Assistant Secretary answers that everybody assumed that somebody else had dealt with it. The accounts got returned, nobody spotted the mistake, and everyone moved onto to other tasks.

Residential Institutions Redress Board of the Irish Government 2002–2018

In 1999, the Irish Government commissioned a report into the abuse of children who were in the care of facilities managed and run under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Church in the Irish Republic in the 1940s and 1950s. It reported in 2009. A Redress Board was set up to investigate and compensate claimants who were abused physically and mentally as children when living in these facilities. The Board sat for 16 years. In total, 16,650 applications were processed with awards worth €970 million. Of these, 1069 applications were withdrawn, refused or had a nil award. This report on work of the Commission and the Board derives from the histories given and the expert assessment of 19 claimants for compensation. Their ages ranged between 47 and 72 years at the time of the expert’s assessment.

Head shops and new psychoactive substances: a public health perspective

In 2010, Ireland found itself at the eye of an international storm as a network of head shops emerged selling new psychoactive substances (NPS) and Irish youth rapidly became the heaviest users of NPS in Europe. Within months, the Irish government enacted novel legislation, which has since been copied by other countries, which effectively stopped the head shops selling NPS. Critics of this policy argued that it could cause harms to escalate. A number of separate studies indicate that a range of drug-related harms increased amongst Irish youth during the period of head shop expansion. Within months of their closure, health harms began to decline. NPS-related addiction treatment episodes reduced and admissions to both psychiatric and general hospitals related to any drug problem began to fall. Population use underwent sustained decline. Consequently, the closure of head shops can be viewed as a success in terms of public health.

Forms of Representation of the Monarch in Irish Court Odes During the Reign of Queen Anne Stuart

The article aims to explore forms of representation of a monarch in Irish court odes between 1702 and 1714. By 1702, Protestant Ireland to a large extent adopted the political structure of its mother country. The Irish parliament was turning into a regular institution, and the development of the party system was also underway. This posed a threat to the status quo, which the Irish government sought to maintain. To protect the rights of the Crown in England Queen Anne used a theatre of power and heavily relied on self-representation. However, in Ireland, the Queen's representation was limited to the odes for the Queen’s birthdays. Control over the writing of odes was given into the hands of Irish lords-justices, who were heavily involved in party politics. This led to the appropriation of the Queen’s second body by a dominant party in the Irish government: the image of Queen Anne was frequently used to support party politics. The image of the Queen was fairly passive due to her gender and physical disabilities: with the lack of the Queen’s personal control, it was not difficult for the parties to use the monarch’s second body for their purposes. In odes of 1709–1710, the image of Queen Anne was used to support Whig war policies; in 1711–1714 it was transformed to support the new moderate cabinet. As a result, instead of being an important weapon against partisanship, the representation of Queen Anne in Ireland was occasionally used as party propaganda.

Sustaining a prolonged pivot: Appraising challenges facing higher education stakeholders in switching to online learning

An Irish Government directive to close colleges amid the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in a switch to emergency remote teaching. Many lecturers unused to practicing online began teaching students who were unfamiliar with online learning. Completion of the semester does not necessarily indicate that it is practicable for a more extended period. This paper queries four aspects of the sustainability of emergency remote teaching: its acceptance by stakeholders; its impact upon student motivation and faculty workload; and its effect upon learning outputs. Questionnaires administered to undergraduate design students and faculty captured their respective experiences of emergency remote teaching. Acceptance of an extended pivot to online learning is not guaranteed, but will surely form a central facet of academic continuity. Increased working hours associated with online teaching endangers the work-life balance of lecturers, yet the same staff must find ways to support student motivation. Faculty’s reduced expectations of student output places strain upon the sustainability of online education founded upon an unplanned pivot. The experience of emergency remote teaching has created an opportunity for all parties to leverage the affordances of online learning – the challenge will be to ensure that all aspects of any extended switch to online are sustainable.