Social Justice Matters

There has been an increasing awareness of the need for Ireland to take decisive action to improve its environmental performance and meet its climate-related targets.

Social Justice Ireland has long been emphasising the need to carry out the necessary changes in a just fashion. This concept has come to be known as “Just Transition”.

In this podcast, Eamon Murphy sits down with Sinéad Mercier, Advisor to the Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action, to discuss the concept of a Just Transition, including what it is; what its implications are for Ireland; what can we learn from international examples, including in Germany and Australia; and the benefits of allowing communities to lead in relation to climate action.

 

Tax Expenditures are useful policy tools for government, but have a significant cost attached to them.

In the fourth episode in the SJI's Ten Minute Lessons series, Social Justice Ireland's Economic & Social Analyst Eamon Murphy explains the key points and concepts behind Tax Expenditures, including the what, the why, the costs and effects, and the problems associated with them.

The purpose of our SJI's Ten Minute Lessons series is to educate and inform listeners on a particular area of policy, giving a brief overview and hitting on the key points that people need to know. They are intended to be short introductory tutorials to complex policy areas!

For years, Social Justice Ireland has been asking government to reduce the tax reliefs for private pension savings, and use the money saved to bolster the State Pension. Despite the huge cost of these tax reliefs and their very unequal nature, the trend in policy over that time has actually been towards greater emphasis on the private pension industry.

What’s influencing these policy decisions? For example, why are we moving towards a system where the pensions industry will receive hundreds of millions in additional subsidies, while the nature of this support is never up for discussion?

Eamon Murphy sat down with Dr. Michelle Maher of Maynooth University to find out. They discussed the politics of pensions, and how it has been possible for a group of people with a particular combination of expertise and access to help shape Ireland’s pension system. The discussion has serious implications for the broader policymaking process.

In this episode, we look back to our 2018 Social Policy Conference, and a presentation by Tony Fahey, Professor Emeritus of Social Policy at UCD.

Worse off than their parents? The rising generation of private renters looks at the boom in private rented housing and the corresponding decline in home ownership. Tony also explains why this presents a major problem for Irish society, particularly for young people.

A full video of this presentation is available at www.socialjustice.ie

Refundable Tax Credits could help alleviate the situation of the working poor and make the Irish tax system fairer. But what are they and how would they work?

In the third episode in the SJI's Ten Minute Lessons series, Social Justice Ireland's Economic & Social Analyst Eamon Murphy explains the key points and concepts behind Refundable Tax Credits, including the what, the why, and the potential effects.

The purpose of our SJI's Ten Minute Lessons series is to educate and inform listeners on a particular area of policy, giving a brief overview and hitting on the key points that people need to know. They are intended to be short introductory tutorials to complex policy areas!

Listen to Roddy Doyle, one of Ireland's greatest living authors, in conversation with Mick Clifford of the Irish Examiner at our recent 2019 Social Policy Conference.

Roddy discusses Fighting Words, the organisation he created to help children and young people to discover and harness the power of their own imaginations and creative writing skills. He also gives his opinions on education policy (including his desire that the Leaving Certificate be scrapped and something else be built from scratch in its place), and many other areas.

Roddy has produced some of the greatest works of Irish fiction of the last three decades, including the Barrytown Trilogy, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, for which he won the Booker Prize in 1993.

Colette Bennett, Research and Policy Officer at Social Justice Ireland, reviews the Government's Housing Strategy at the Social Justice Ireland Social Policy Conference 2019.

Rebuilding Ireland is a five pillar strategy designed to solve the housing crisis. Colette's paper - A Review of Government's Housing Strategy from the perspective of Young and Old - on which this presentation is based shows how each of these five pillars is failing.

The conference was titled The Challenges of Success, and examined possible policy responses to Ireland's changing demographics. Colette's presentation - the slides, the full paper and a video of the presentation - are available from our website www.socialjustice.ie.

The official stats for poverty and deprivation in Ireland for 2018 were released today by the CSO. In this episode of SJI's Ten Minute Lessons, Social Justice Ireland's Economic & Social Analyst Eamon Murphy looks at the headline poverty numbers, explains where they come from, and why they're measured as they are.

The purpose of our SJI's Ten Minute Lessons series is to educate and inform listeners on a particular area of policy, giving a brief overview (somewhere in the range of 8 to 15 minutes) and hitting on the key points that people need to know.

Think of them as short introductory tutorials to complex policy areas!

Basic Income is policy area that has received much attention in recent years, but it is still relatively poorly understood. It's an alternative to the social welfare systems of Western democracies which could revolutionise economies and societies.

In this, the first episode in the SJI's Ten Minute Lessons series, Social Justice Ireland's Economic & Social Analyst Eamon Murphy explains the key points and concepts behind Basic Income, including the what, the why and the how.

The purpose of our SJI's Ten Minute Lessons series is to educate and inform listeners on a particular area of policy, giving a brief overview (somewhere in the range of 8 to 15 minutes) and hitting on the key points that people need to know.

Think of them as short introductory tutorials to complex policy areas!

 

Following Dr. Seán Healy's interview with the Sunday Business Post for their article examining Basic Income, we take a look back to our Social Policy Conference in 2016 when we looked at the area of Basic Income in detail. In this episode you can now listen to the opening presentation from that conference, given by Social Justice Ireland founders Brigid Reynolds and Seán Healy.

You can download and read their full paper, Basic Income - Radical Utopia or Practical Solution?, at www.socialjustice.ie, and also watch the video of their presentation which examines the changing dynamics around social policy which make a move towards a Basic Income imperative if we are to achieve a fair and just society.