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CrisisJam #5
Contents
What a week. So limited were the parameters of Tuesday night's TV3 Future Taoiseach debate, it's a wonder the papers succeeded in eking more than a tweet's worth of commentary out of it. CrisisJam felt the Empty Chair put on an excellent show. Student nurses and midwives took to the streets to protest against government plans to gradually eliminate their pay and an Independent candidate in Dublin South East returned to his hip-hop roots. Meanwhile, a dictator remained 99% uninstalled in Egypt. Curated by Eadaoin O'Sullivan, CrisisJam refuses to button its lip even as we are told that the slightest flapping might sink the good ship Éireann; succumbs to the inevitable and analyses the leaders' debate; shines a light on public funding for private schools; takes a look at Donal O'Connor's glittering career; and finds that, whatever the mistakes of social partnership, unions are as essential as they ever were.
- Cowards of the country - Hugh Green
- Boxed in, boxed out - Harry Browne
- Fee-paying schools and education cutbacks: Every little helps? - Alison Spillane
- Guess who's having a good recession? - Colin Coulter
- Divided, conquered? - Aidan Regan
(Image left: Tadhg O'Sullivan)
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Guess who's having a good recession?
 The onset of recession has offered an opportunity to the powerful and the wealthy to seek to drive a wedge between those ordinary folk in Ireland who draw an income from the public purse and those who do not. The self-serving hostility towards the public sector that exists within corporate circles invariably reveals itself in the advocacy of a certain, predictable version of shock therapy. If those who are employed by the state were to be subjected to the same pressures and standards that preva... |
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Cowards of the county
 A common theme of the crisis has been the idea that the eyes of the world are on Ireland, a coded – and sometimes not so coded – way of tellings dissenters to button it for fear their flappy jaws will land us in even more trouble with those we like to call our European ‘partners’, for want of a better word to describe them. Business, policy and media elites, eager to embrace what they see as the shiny cosmopolitanism of an imaginary Europe in the sky, are slow to point out that European ...
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Boxed in, boxed out
 With electoral annihilation pending for Fianna Fáil, Micheál Martin’s election as that party’s leader had the potential to be interesting only for its facilitation of yet another round of ‘where have all the fadas gone?’ But, writes Harry Browne, his ‘prolier-than-thou’ posturing in last Tuesday’s leaders’ debate may signal an opportunistic shift by his party that, while intellectually incredible, may be politically important in the years to come. That the government-in-all-but
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Fee-paying schools and education cutbacks: Every little helps?
 Cuts in funding and resources hit those schools which cater for children with special needs and children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds hardest, and are being imposed across the public education system. Meanwhile, private fee-paying schools, which rank 'close to the bottom of the table' in their provision for children with learning difficulties, received €100 million in state subsidies last year. Alison Spillane reports.
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Divided, conquered?
 Union density in the Irish private sector stands at 20 per cent. If the Sindo and its readers had their way, it would stand at zero. Despite a recent ILO/IMF paper pointing out that high collective bargaining density is correlated with economic stability and low levels of inequality, some elements of Irish mainstream opinion see any and all failures in social partnership agreements here as reason enough to dispense with unions altogether. Were one so inclined, a self-serving element could concei...
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