Authority In Ireland Research Articles

A Case Study: Description, Reflections and Opportunities

In this paper I adopt and merge elements from both Yin (2005) 'Case Study Method', and Guba and Lincoln (1989) 'Fourth Generation Evaluation' to provide the reader with some background information, insights and future directions of the recently established UNEVOC National Centre Ireland. This is presented in three separate sections; Section 1, Descriptions, provides details on the background of the Dublin Institute of Technology, locates the emergence of the UNESCO-UNEVOC agenda in DIT, and DIT's appointment as the UNEVOC National Centre Ireland. Section 2, Reflections, details the work of the National UNEVOC Centre Ireland during the period 2006-2008. I note some of the milestones and strategic directions taken during this development period. Section 3, Opportunities, sets out future possibilities that would enable the UNEVOC National Centre Ireland to move to a new level of operation and expand the range of work it can undertake and the contribution it can make towards UNESCO-UNEVOC goals.This paper will not detail in any great length or depth with descriptions relating to technical vocational education and training (TVET) in Ireland. The rational for this position is quite simple, Guest Speakers from the main Irish national organisations (The Institutes of Technology Ireland, FAS, The National Qualifications Authority of Ireland, the Teachers Union of Ireland, the Irish Business and Employers Confederation, the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs) will make presentations to this seminar portraying the rich depth of education and training policy and practice currently in operation Ireland. Rather I want to use this opportunity to share with participants the emerging story of the UNEVOC National Centre Ireland, this information maybe of interests to other established and newly forming UNEVOC Centres in both the North and South. In essence I am endeavouring to provide the reader with a contextual framework to support future dialogue on possible collaborations and capacity building initiatives.

An investigation into waste charges in Ireland, with emphasis on public acceptability

There are 34 local authorities in Ireland with legal responsibility to deal with waste arising in their jurisdictions. In 2003 the National government introduced legislation that allows local authorities to recover the costs of waste collection and disposal, and to do so by 'executive function', i.e., not requiring support or agreement by the relevant local political representatives. The year 2005 was set as the date by which implementation of a pay by weight or volume was to be introduced. The local authorities were given autonomy as to how they addressed this challenge, so we have - in theory - 34 potentially different experiences from which to learn. This paper examines the pay-as-you-throw (PAYT) waste system in Ireland as it develops in line with EU and National demands, with a view to assessing economic and environmental efficiency. All local authorities were surveyed and thirteen responded. While this only represents about 38% of the total number, it includes jurisdictions that contribute in total more than 50% of waste arising. Key figures in the policy and business community were also interviewed in order to identify how the charging schemes were implemented, and to what effect. These insights and parallel investigations are used to review the potential for problems regarding public acceptability of environmental taxes and examine the evidence for economic and environmental efficiency, as well as problem areas, using data from each of the responding local authority jurisdictions. Concentrating on the incentives and drivers across households, municipalities and private waste contractors, the variations in charging system, annual charges and landfill charges are compared where information was available. The various jurisdictions are also examined in terms of relative successes and problems encountered in the transition from fixed charge or free waste collection to PAYT systems. The Irish situation is placed in the context of the international literature on PAYT, the growing waste crisis, environmental attitudes vs. behaviours, and the acceptability of environmental taxes generally.

Joyce/Foucault: Sexual Confessions (review)

Reviewed by: Joyce/Foucault: Sexual Confessions Vike Martina Plock Joyce/Foucault: Sexual Confessions. Wolfgang Streit. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2004. Pp. ix + 229. $65.00 (cloth). Since the 1995 publication of Kathleen Ferris' James Joyce and the Burden of Disease, the subject of Joyce's unresolved conflict with Catholicism and its promotion of absolute confession has been put back on the agenda of Joyce criticism. In his Joyce/Foucault: Sexual Confessions, Wolfgang Streit now offers a novel interpretation of Joyce's conflicted obsession with the confessional. Given the Catholic upbringing of the Irish writer it is indeed surprising that no book-length study on the subject of sexual confession has been written before. Yet as its title suggests, and despite occasional references to the troubling impact of Catholic authority in Ireland, Streit's study does not rely on biography but on a Foucauldian framework in the analysis of Joyce's texts, listing among the conventional readings of Joyce's four major prose books, Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, and also the less-studied texts Chamber Music and Exiles. The latter are particularly welcome, not only because their inclusion gives credit to Joyce's "lesser texts," but it also confirms Streit's argument that Joyce's struggle with sexual confessions was truly an ongoing one. Essentially, the argument of Joyce/Foucault is that throughout his oeuvre Joyce developed a sustained and complex resistance to both the confession as an institution and its obligatory production of sexual discourse. In consistently applying Foucault's theoretical reference system as developed in The History of Sexuality, Streit successfully avoids both an author-based argument and a pathologization of Joycean characters. What follows instead is a scholarly and meticulous literary analysis of Joyce's works that pays significant tribute to their critical reception. Streit's book thus offers more than a Foucauldian reading of Joyce's texts, for it presents a first-rate synopsis of Joyce criticism to date, situating its argument firmly in the ongoing discussions of critical topics such as theology, Catholicism, narrative theory, and connections between sexuality and medicine. A distinctive strength of Streit's book is also the excellent close-reading of Joyce's works, especially the reading of Exiles and the skillfully executed analysis of Stephen's guilt-ridden response to the Church's demands for sexual purity in A Portrait. The chapter on Exiles is probably the strongest one of the book. It analyzes not only the content of the play, but also the theater's integral emphasis on speech and discourse and its relevance for the topic of sexual confession as replacement for unfulfilled sexual desire. Naturally, Streit not only understands confession in its religious context, instead persuasively widening the scope of the book's argument to consider a number of "profane confessional scenes" appearing in Joyce's texts (40). Consequently, Streit reads Bloom's masochism in accordance with Foucault's analysis of a developing late-nineteenth-century scientia sexualis. Having thus far successfully charted Joyce's conflicting response to compulsory confession, the book then concludes with a competent analysis of the Wake that reads its "deferral of signification" as the most prominent attempt to evade the confessional (151). Yet in spite of the undoubted relevance of Foucauldian theory to Joyce's oeuvre, Streit's argument often over-amplifies its significance. Joyce texts often appear only as the playground on which the intellectual designs of the French theorist are probed. It remains doubtful if the speaker of the poem "What Counsel Has the Hooded Moon" in Chamber Music seriously prefers confession and sex discourse to physical love, or if HCE's stutter in the Wake can be read exclusively as a metaphorical "resistance to the power over life" (145). Foucauldian theory seems over-applied at this point and the reader of Streit's book is consequentially faced with the suspicion that it is not always productive to abandon traditional or conventional readings of Joyce in the attempt to make the text fit a theoretical framework. Inevitably, Foucauldian catchphrases [End Page 937] such as "power over life" and "will to knowledge" that are scattered through the book remain...

A rural housing sustainability index

The pressure on planning authorities in Ireland to grant permission for rural housing has led to increasing public dissention, frequently leading to political intervention on behalf of individuals; this in turn has severely undermined county planning strategies. The objective of the rural housing sustainability index is to ensure that better-quality and more sustainable housing is constructed in rural areas, while also minimising the effect of such housing on the rural environment. The index uses 70 criteria or indicators categorised into site, design, construction and social indicators. A score is allocated for each indicator with higher scores allocated for more sustainable actions or options. Threshold scores are set for each category from which the sustainability of the proposed development is determined. This allows planners to more accurately assess the impact of rural development as well as increasing the sustainability of the housing stock. The concept of a trade-off, by allowing more sustainable and sensitive housing in areas where normal housing is inappropriate, is explored.

'From the Slurry to the Curry': The Politics of Food Regulation and Reform in Ireland

During the mid 1990s, amid increasing anxiety over food safety, the Irish government and the EU sought to reform food regulation. Prompted by the political fallout over bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), this process would lead to the foundation of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI), a body sufficiently innovative to prove an important influence upon the European Food Safety Authority. The FSAI was designed to resurrect public confidence in food regulation. The government argued that it would replicate the USA's Food and Drugs Administration, involve new regulatory relationships and elevate the role of science. On closer inspection, however, rather more exists in the way of continuity than change. Thus, while there has been much emphasis upon the manner in which risk is assessed and communicated, little has changed in how it is managed. This paper argues that such reform has been shaped by developments taking place at an international level between the EU and the WTO. On this level, the measures that are taken to protect food safety are those that have as little impact as possible on free trade. This paper also challenges those who interpret such change as part of the emergence of a risk society. In contrast, this paper contends that reform remains firmly embedded within a political project that favours reducing state regulation. Government, it seems, is no longer willing to assume an all-encompassing role in which it defines food standards and regulates and defends a particular food safety regime. It is a Hayek-inspired vision, where order is restored not through more stringent regulation but through the collection of individually informed choices made by those confronted with hazards. In a subtle but nonetheless crucial fashion, it involves the 'individualisation' of risk, so that government is charged with the task of providing the requisite information upon which individuals can make a scientifically informed judgement.

Community mothers' programme: extension to the travelling community in Ireland.

STUDY OBJECTIVE: To see whether the community mothers' programme, using lay volunteer mothers to deliver a childhood development programme, could be extended successfully to the travelling community in Ireland. DESIGN:...

State, Society and Authority in Ireland: The Foundations of the Modern StateGretchen M. MacMillan Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1993, pp. x, 278

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General

The Idea of History: Revised Edition, with Lectures, 1926–1928. By R. G. Collingwood. Edited with an Introduction by Jan van der Dussen The End of History and the Last Man. By Francis Fukuyama History and Social Theory. By Peter Burke State Theory and State History. Edited by Rolf Torstendahl Mythical Past, Elusive Future: History and Society in an Anxious Age. By Frank Furedi Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History. Selected and introduced by William Safire Computing for Historians. An Introductory Guide. By Evan Mawdsley and Thomas Munck History and its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past. By Francis Haskell Past and Present, Essays on Historicism in Art from Donatello to Picasso. By Irving Lavin Masaccio and Masolino: A Complete Catalogue. By Paul Joannides An Historian in the Twentieth Century: Chapters in Intellectual Autobiography. By Max Beloff The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Industrial Archaeology. Edited by Barrie Trinder Humankind the Gatherer‐Hunter from Earliest Times to Industry. By Michael Davies, Henry Davies and Kathryn Davies The Rise of Eurocentrism: Anatomy of Interpretation. By Vassilis Lambropoulos The European Rescue of the Nation State. By Alan S. Milward The Course off French History. By Pierre Goubert. Translated by Maarten Ultee Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism: A Parallel History of their Origins and Early Development. Edited by Hershel Shanks Islam in European Thought. By Albert Hourani Byzantium: A World Civilization. Edited by Angeliki E. Laiou and Henry Maguire The Struggle to Understand: A History of Human Wonder and Discovery. By Herbert C. Corben Essays in Industry and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: England and France. By John Harris Nationalism and Internationalism in Science 1880–1939: Four Studies of the Nobel Population. By Elisabeth Crawford Humphry Davy: Science and Power. By David Knight On the Move: Essays in Labour and Transport History Presented to Philip Bagwell. Edited by Chris Wrigley and John Shepherd The Cadastral Map in the Service of the State: A History of Property Mapping. By Roger J.P. Kain and Elizabeth Baigent The City and Education in Four Nations. Edited by Ronald K. Goodenow and William E. Marsden Three Nations ‐ A Common History? England, Scotland, Ireland and British History c. 1600–1920. Edited by Ronald G. Asch A History of Wales. By John Davies Press, Politics and Society: A History of Journalism in Wales. By Aled Jones State, Society and Authority in Ireland: The Foundations of the Modern Irish State. By Gretchen M. MacMillan A History of Ulster. By Jonathan Bardon Anatomy of Scotland: How Scotland Works. Edited by Magnius Linklater and Robin Denniston The Amateur Military Tradition 1558–1945. By Ian F. W. Beckett The Development of Military Thought: The Nineteenth Century. By Azar Gat War Machine: The Rationalisation of Slaughter in the Modern Age. By Daniel Pick Writing and Reality: A Study of Modern British Diary Fiction. By Andrew Hassam Writing Women's History. Edited by Michelle Perrot White, Male and Middle Class: Explorations of Feminism in History. By Catherine Hall Representing Others: White Views Of Indigenous Peoples. Edited by Mick Gidley Medicine in Society: Historical Essays. Edited by Andrew Wear The Cambridge World History of Human Disease. Edited by Kenneth F. Kiple Explaining Epidemics and other Studies in the History of Medicine. By Charles E. Rosenberg Epidemics and Ideas: Essays in the Historical Perception of Pestilence. Edited by Terence Ranger and Paul Slack Medicine and Charity before the Welfare State. Edited by Jonathan Barry and Colin Jones Food, Diet and Economic Change Past and Present. Edited by Catherine Geissler and Derek J. Oddy A History of the University of Cambridge, Volume IV: 1870–1990. By Christopher N.L. Brooke The Illustrated History of Oxford University. Edited by John Prest The Oxford Guide to Family History. By David Hey The Wakes of Northamptonshire: A Family History. By Peter Gordon Some Historians of Lincolnshire. Edited by Christopher Sturman The History of the Baptist Missionary Society 1792–1992. By Brian Stanley

Alternative Allegiances in Early Modern Irelandl

The nature of allegiance in early modern Ireland was complicated by conquest and religious difference and fragmented by the diversity of a colonial community which was made up of settlers from different periods and different places, professing different religions, and competing for influence. Notoriously, it was the more recent English protestant settlers who prevailed. The argument of this essay is that the evolving character of catholic allegiance was shaped by the growing need to contain English influence through the protection afforded by a common crown whose authority in Ireland was independent of its authority in England. The sense of being joined with England, but separate from its political processes, was transmitted to the protestant colonists and provided the ingredients of the colonial patriotism of the eighteenth-century ascendancy.

Clerical Indiscipline and Ecclesiastical Authority in Ireland, 1690-1750

Clerical Indiscipline and Ecclesiastical Authority in Ireland, 1690-1750

Suburban development in Ireland, 1960–80

Irish towns and cities were transformed by rapid suburban growth in the sixties and seventies. Despite the pace and the scale of this development it generated little interest outside of local planning and architectural circles. The Irish are not concerned with suburbanization in the way that some other nations are, even though Irish suburbs often exhibit, in a pronounced manner, some of the least attractive qualities of suburbia. Modern Irish suburbia is distinguished by its seemingly unplanned character including the absence of basic support services for the residential population, and by the modest scale and quality of the housing design. These characteristics reflect the narrow role played by planning authorities in Ireland in contrast to authorities in other European countries. The Irish house building industry, under considerable pressure during this era, was able to deliver a product which met the basic requirements of most people. But the low‐density dispersed settlement form which has resulted in the absence of any strategic control, is unsuited to Irish economic circumstances.

Lessons to be learnt

Traces the development of a quality impetus in the Training and Employment Authority in Ireland. Considers how the focus on quality in a state‐sponsored organisation survived during a period of major change. Discusses the origins of the quality imperative and its implementation. Examines the constraints on the quality focus, and the quality initiatives. Asserts that the challenge was to integrate and rationalise these schemes. Contends that the adoption of quality as a core value of organisational culture is crucial to quality improvement. Concludes that experience indicates the need to develop one′s own system, particularly for an organisation operating in the non‐profit public sector.

Multimedia Modules in Industrial and Managerial Training

Abstract Abstract: This article gives a general outline of the evolution, in the National Training and Employment Authority of Ireland (FAS), of multimedia to deliver training throughout the network of vocational training centres and to Irish industry. It focuses on a few cases of current interest, and draws lessons which may have general application in other countries.

Biographical sketch of Thomas Taylor

Thomas Taylor was born on a boat on the Ganges on 10 May 1786 (Henry Taylor ms, see Sources). His father, Major Joseph Taylor (1765/66-1811), had gone to India 1783 to join the Bengal Army of the British East India Company and had married an Indian lady whose name is recorded as Poor Begum (Hodson, 1927, p. 240; 'Begum' was a term for a lady of high rank). The Irish Taylors were descended from a Joseph Taylour of Mote Hill, near Birmingham, Warwickshire, England, who came to Ireland 1649/50 as an officer Cromwell's army and, after the Protestant victory, was given a tract 'of expropriated land at Killowen, near the present Kenmare, County Kerry. Subsequent Taylors both enlarged the estate and divided it by inheritance. Thomas's grandfather, another Joseph, inherited, among other property, the townland of Dunkerron of some 750 acres on the north branch of Kenmare River, including farmland and cottages, partly rented out, the ruins of a 16th century castle and a salmon fishery. The Taylors were neither Catholic, as were the Irish, nor Church of England, as were the authorities in Ireland at that time, but Free-Thinking Unitarians, a fact that was to have an effect upon Thomas's career. The Taylor family burial place, and Thomas's, was the Protestant churchyard at Neddeen, on a hill east of Kenmare. The church has since been demolished.

Clerical Indiscipline and Ecclesiastical Authority in Ireland, 1690-1750

Clerical Indiscipline and Ecclesiastical Authority in Ireland, 1690-1750

An Irish Expedition to Scotland in 1335

While the reign of Edward II has long been recognised as a critical period in the historical development of Ireland, it is less well known that the early years of the reign of Edward III also represent a critical phase. As in the previous reign, the crisis was connected with Anglo-Scottish warfare. In 1315 it was the Scots under Edward Bruce who had taken the initiative and overrun Ireland. It was the Scots again who landed in Ulster in 1327, hoping once more to enlist Irish support for their cause. In the following year the dying Robert Bruce paid a last visit to Ulster, demonstrating in a peaceful yet forceful manner that the initiative still lay with the Scots. By 1335, Edward III had shown his qualities as a military commander and the situation had changed: an expedition set sail from Ireland to co-operate with the English in an invasion of Scotland.The details of this episode are of more than intrinsic interest. The surviving documents that record the organisation of the expedition illustrate the workings of the English dominion in Ireland in the crucial period following the Bruce invasions. Whether or not the expedition marked a restoration of royal authority in Ireland is a question that calls for an analysis of the events and circumstances that formed the background to the expedition of 1335.

Central Control of Local Authorities in Ireland

fT HE trend of central-local relations in the Irish Free State (1921-1937) and Eire (Ireland) since 1937 has been decidedly toward increased central control over local authorities.1 A highly integrated series of administrative controls has been centered in the Local Appointments Commission and in the Department of Local Government and Public Health. The former has charge of the recruitment of executive, professional, and technical officers for local units; the latter regulates questions of remuneration, superannuation, discipline, and removal. In addition, the Department has come to have a broad jurisdiction including combined purchasing; fiscal controls as to accounting, auditing, and surcharging; administration of grants-inaid; and drastic powers of dissolution. This system of pervasive power extends to all basic units of Irish local administration: county boroughs, administrative counties, boroughs, urban districts, boards of public assistance, and towns. When the Free State was established, an unwary prophet might have predicted that the growth of central-local relations would be in the direction of decentralization. The first decades of the twentieth century in Ireland were marked by a deep-rooted antagonism between elective county councils and the English Local Government Board for Ireland. During the nineteenth century the landlords, through their representation on the grand juries appointed by the sheriffs, had controlled the revenues and admin-

The Financing of the British Armies in Ireland, 1641–9

The history of financial administration in both Great Britain and Ireland is such a neglected subject that it is not surprising to find the years 1641–9, which form a period of special difficulty and confusion, receiving scarcely any attention from serious historical scholars. During this time the responsible authorities in Ireland, England, and Scotland, devoted much time and thought to raising money for the British forces in Ireland. The problems with which they were confronted, and the methods by which they attempted to solve these problems, have an important bearing on the course of the rebellion in Ireland and on its ultimate result.