Tag / featured

playing cards
by Eadaoin O'Sullivan

The screwed up State we’re in

A piece written for the December 2011 CrisisJam special The State We’re In.

A piece written for the December 2011 CrisisJam special The State We’re In.

Gene Kerrigan summed up the State We’re In in one word: screwed. He’s right, of course. We are screwed. It’s patently obvious that we’re screwed. The rapidity of Ireland’s descent into screwed-ity, and the depths to which we have plunged, is unparalleled in what the IMF calls the “advanced economies”. We are, let’s say, very seriously screwed.

One would think that, given the seriousness of this screwedness, this state we’re in; given the effects of this crisis on our public services, our welfare system, our low-paid workers, our emigrating thousands, our jobless thousands; given the despair, the hopelessness, the misery being suffered by so many people all over this country because of stupid decisions made and stupid policies pursued; one would think, given all of this and more, that the months since February’s election would have seen some serious political arguments being played out as the country, and the country’s politicians, grappled with the screwed up state we’re in. Continue reading →

enda kenny eamon gilmore
by Eadaoin O'Sullivan

This ship of State is leaking badly

This was not a leak. It wasn’t even a ‘leak’.The 40-page document detailing Ireland’s budget plans for 2012 and 2013, and the covering letters of intent from Minister for Finance Michael Noonan discussed by the Bundestag’s finance committee yesterday were not faxed under cover of darkness from deep within the Department of Finance. They were sent – possibly faxed, possibly emailed as an attachment, possibly handed over in an envelope, who knows how these things get about – to the European Commission by the troika following its third quarterly review of how well Ireland is stifling economic growth and unravelling social protections. Or, implementing necessary austerity measures. The letters of intent from Michael Noonan, along with “confidential draft programme documents” were either sent directly to the European Commission by Mr Noonan’s office, or were given to the troika to insert into their review.

Not. A. Leak. Continue reading →

private public education
by Eadaoin O'Sullivan

Time to call time on fee-paying schools?

In the school year 2009-2010 the State paid out more than €107 million to fee-paying schools to cover the costs of salaries for teachers, clerical officers and special needs assistants in those schools. In the same year, more than €12 million was given to these schools in capital grants, grants for assistive technologies, and grants for computers and other ICTs. There are 56 fee-paying schools in the State. The State’s 776 free post primary schools* received just short of €46 million in grants for ICTs in 2010; fee-paying schools received €2.5 million. At a rough calculation (and bearing in mind the monies would not have been distributed evenly) this works out at just shy of €60,000 for each free post primary school, and €45,500 per fee-charging school. In total, between January 2007 and May 2011, fee-charging schools have received more than €531 million from the State to pay teachers, admin staff, install or upgrade ICT infrastructure, and build or upgrade school buildings. The 2009 McCarthy report estimated that, between them,these 56 schools raise €119 million annually in fees from parents.The Government will save some €2.7 million through the removal of 227 Special Needs Assistant posts in Irish schools, assuming all those unemployed SNAs are entitled to Jobseeker’s Benefit. Resource teaching posts for Travellers and the Visiting Teachers for Traveller Service were withdrawn in Budget 2011, effective 31 August this year. Language support has seen cutbacks in allocation. Rural co-ordinators for 331 DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunity In Schools) schools were removed as part of Budget 2011 in order to save €24 million (although this figure does not take into account the cost to the exchequer of Jobseeker’s Benefit for those Rural Co-ordinators who subsequently went onto the Live Register) a cut which the current Government has no plan to reverse. Only two-thirds of the €150 million pledged as part of the Smart Schools=Smart Economy scheme launched in 2009 has been disbursed; the €63 million that was to be given to schools in 2011 was cut in December’s budget to €1.5 million. (The annual budget of €30 million “for support, rolling replacement and enhancement of the service” recommended by the Joint Advisory Group on the scheme seems to have been entirely abandoned.) In the context of such brutal austerity – not just in education, but across the board – and the infliction of the consequences of this austerity on some of the most vulnerable children in the State, the question must be asked: why do we continue to fund these fee-paying schools to such a degree? Continue reading →

hospital drip
by Eadaoin O'Sullivan

Journalism in absentia: Reporting medical research in the mainstream media

A version of this piece ran in the first edition of the Michael Smith-edited reboot of Village Magazine in December 2008. 

A common rumour concerning the contemporary print media is that it is heavily reliant on the public relations industry to supply it with story ideas. The mass austerity drives of newspapers all over the world from the 1990’s onwards; brought on by declining sales and advertising revenue, led to massive staff cutbacks, even as newspapers increased their pagination. In 2006, a group of researchers at Cardiff University set out to discover if the rumours of a newspaper industry in hock to its public relations cousin were true. Their findings, originally published in 2006 but brought to wide public attention in Nick Davies’s 2008 book Flat Earth News, showed that they were: of the 2,207 stories they analysed, they found that less than half of them were entirely independent of traceable PR.

The reliance of the media on press releases and press officers to give them both story ideas, and, too often, the wording of a story too is explained in one way by the the increased pressures on ever smaller numbers of journalists to fill an ever larger news hole, in less time than ever before. A second contributing factor is the increased popularity of lifestyle supplements. These are easy and cheap to produce, consisting as they do of pages of thinly-veiled advertorial and news of celebrity exploits, both of which categories come pre-packaged in press releases from companies and agents eager to see their brand promoted. Continue reading →