Social Justice Matters

1st October is International Day of Older Persons. To mark this occasion, we're going to take a listen back to Dr. Diarmuid O'Shea's presentation from our 2019 Annual Social Policy Conference The Challenges of Success. Dr. O'Shea presented a paper on Living Well in Our Community, particularly on the theme of ageing well. 

To mark Basic Income week, we listen back to Dr. Seán Healy presenting a history of Basic Income in Ireland from our " Delivering a Basic Income Pilot" webinar which can be viewed here.

 

To mark International Day of Democracy on the 15th September,  Susanne Rogers chats to Dr. Matt Ryan about deliberative democracy and participatory budgeting (PB) and his new book " Why Citizen Participation Succeeds or Fails.  A Comparative Analysis of Participatory Budgeting" published by Policy Press.  

Dr. Matt Ryan is Associate Professor in Governance and Public Policy at the University of Southampton, UKRI Future Leaders Fellow, Co-Director of the Centre for Democratic Futures and Policy Director at the Web Science Institute. 

 

Ireland is often thought of the land of saints and scholars, and our highly-skilled workforce is one of the main attractions for investors looking to relocate here. However, the literacy divide is a large one. One in six Irish adults have difficulties reading and one in four have difficulties with basic maths. 

To mark International Literacy Day on the 8th September, Colette Bennett chats with Helen Ryan, Policy Officer with NALA - the National Adult Literacy Agency - on trends, impacts and policy goals.

The Y-Foundation is one of the key national developers of the Housing First principle in Finland and this week, the CEO, Juha Kaakinen, chats to Susanne Rogers about the Housing First principle, their booklet 'A home of your Own' (which can be accessed here: https://ysaatio.fi/en/housing-first-finland/a-home-of-your-own-handbook) and the challenges that lie ahead. 

Dr. Amie Lajoie is a senior researcher at the think-tank TASC and author of 'Exploring Household Debt in Ireland: The Burden of Non-Mortgage Debt & Opportunities to Support Low-Income Households'. Amie chats to Susanne Rogers about the findings of the report and the Money Made Sense programme that arose from the recommendations. 

How is disability affected by ageing and how can we develop an understanding of the subjective experiences of disability in older age?

Dr Ann Leahy explores these questions in her new book Disability and Ageing – Towards a Critical Perspective. Published by Policy Press, the book features in the Ageing in a Global Context series in association with the British Society of Gerontology, addressing broad cross-cutting issues around ageing in a global society. 

In this episode, Ann chats with Colette Bennett about this important topic and policies to be brought forward to ensure a quality of life for all.

In July 2021, the Central Bank published a series of papers on mortgage arrears, including those on Long Term Mortgage Arrears, Mortgage Shortfalls, and the impact of Covid. In this episode, Fergal McCann, Head of Function for Stress Testing, Analytics and Resilience in the Central Bank of Ireland's Macro-Financial Division chats with Colette Bennett about mortgage arrears, the continuing fall-out of the 2008 crash and what can be done to avoid the same thing happening again.

 

To mark United Nations World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, in this episode Susanne Rogers chats to Donal Leader - Advocacy Officer at Christian Brothers European Province, John McGeady - Justice Officer for the Sisters of Our Lady of Apostles - Irish Province and Brian O'Toole - Director of the Interprovincial Justice Desk for the Presentation Sisters about how they came together to create a civil society submission to the Universal Periodic Review, looking at Ireland's Human Rights obligations and responses to human trafficking measures, domestic and gender based violence and migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. 

The submission can be read here: https://www.olaireland.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/UPR-Submission-on-Human-Trafficking-Domestic-Gender-Based-Violence-and-Rights-of-Refugees-Asylum-Seekers-ERI-IPA-OLA-18-03-2021.pdf

 

 

In this week's episode, Barry Finnegan, Programme Director and Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Journalism and Media Communications at Griffith College Dublin chats to Susanne Rogers about the difference between fake news, disinformation and misinformation, the power of language, free speech and critical thinking around news. 

We are delighted that Social Justice Matters has been recognised by FeedSpot as one of the 20 social justice podcasts you should be following in 2021. Check out the list here: https://blog.feedspot.com/social_justice_podcasts/