The EU-IMF Memorandum of understanding makes no mention of a flat-rate household charge. Luckily the Government parties - both of whom campaigned against it - don't intend to introduce one. Oh, wait...By Michael Taft.

Stop the presses! Fine Gael has come out against a flat-rate household charge. All you wild and wacky lefties can put away your signs, leaflets and banners – the senior Government party is in agreement with you. I don’t know where this leaves Minister Hogan, but the Fine Gael party has made their position crystal clear: no flat-tax.

A new report from the agency UN Women shows that there is still a huge gap between the legal guarantees of rights afforded to women and their everyday lives. Prefacing the report, its authors write: “This volume of Progress of the World’s Women starts with a paradox: the past century has seen a transformation in women’s legal rights, with countries in every region expanding the scope of women’s legal entitlements. Nevertheless for most of the world’s women, the laws that exist on paper do not translate to equality and justice.”

The Irish Association of Social Workers (IASW) held a conference in Dublin on Friday 1 July calling for "comprehensive reform of the child protection and welfare system in Ireland to promote and protect the welfare of children".

At the conference, the IASW launched 'A Call for Change', a document framed by frontline social workers which outlines ways in which services to children and families can be improved. The IASW says 10 key measures must be addressed. These were outlined by Sharon Shields.

It gets this weird - the Government is subsidising companies that are cutting their own workforce, all in the name of subsidising job creation.  Nonetheless, the Government will eventually claim that it is a success. It is the classic three-card trick – and we end up getting fleeced. By Michael Taft.

In its Jobs Initiative, the Government cut the lower rate of employers’ PRSI in half – from 8.5% to 4.25%. It was claimed that this would incentivise job creation. This is a temporary measure up to 2014 and will cost €473 million.

Government subsidies to business to create jobs are nothing new but they usually take another form – providing a tax/PRSI break for any additional job created. This was the approach Fianna Fáil took and what the Labour Party proposed.  Whatever about the fault of these programmes, at least it aimed to ‘reward’ additionality - that is, an increase in jobs.

The British New Economics Foundation (nef) today released a report, The Ratio, which suggests forcing companies to reveal the ratio between their bottom and top pay level. One of the report's authors, David Boyle, says:

"For too long, campaigns against corporate greed and ever-widening pay ratios have tended to be defensive and negative.  They have been campaigns against rather than campaigns for equity, or anything else.

"This needs to change partly because having a compressed pay ratio is not just a good thing ethically.  Nor is it just a better way of motivating staff and providing greater equity in society, with all the economic benefits that will bring.

"It is also a sign that a company is sensitively, fairly and imaginatively run, that its management and board understands the role that all their staff can play, and that collaboration inside and outside the company is as important to their success as competition.

The statisics on domestic abuse in Ireland are often worrying, and the government needs to do more to ensure victims are protected. By Justin Frewen.

“… one in five Irish women who have ever been in a relationship experience physical, emotional, financial or sexual abuse.” (Margaret Martin, Director Women’s Aid)

The recent launch of the annual statistics report for 2010 by Women’s Aid on domestic violence serves once more to highlight the continuing abuse inflicted on so many women in Ireland by their partners.

A new Convention on rights for domestic workers has been adopted by the International Labour Organisation. Domestic workers are one of the least protected groups in Ireland, and it is hoped that this measure will vastly improve their working conditions. By Bernard O'Rourke.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO), at its latest meeting in Geneva has adopted a Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers which will set international standards to protect the rights of domestic workers worldwide. 

The government can take a different approach to public services, one based on growth, efficiency and targeted investment to achieve better outcomes. By Michael Taft.

In previous posts (here and here) I showed that Irish public services were already grossly underfunded by EU norms and that, using ESRI data, cutting public sector employment will have only a trivial impact on the fiscal deficit. In this, the last of three posts on public services, I will sketch out an alternative fiscal approach to public services.

It should be borne in mind that past surveys have found Irish public services relatively efficient compared to EU norms. While measuring public sector productivity is a difficult exercise and the methodology is still being developed: