In the first quarter of each year the European Commission release its Country Report for Ireland, detailing its review of the current economic situation, Ireland’s progress with country-specific recommendations previously made by the European Commission, and setting out reform priorities for Ireland in the coming year. In our initial response to this year’s report, Social Justice Ireland welcomed the focus on a number of key areas and set out our proposals on how Ireland might respond to the Country Specific Recommendations.
The estimated cost of the overrun of the budget for the National Children’s Hospital currently stands at €450m. Details have emerged of where the €99m to cover the cost of the National Children’s Hospital overrun in Budget 2019 will come from. This will have an impact across a number of Departments and projects in 2019 and comes with a social and economic cost as well as a political one. Government has yet to identify where the remainder of the €350m to cover the cost overrun will come from. This information should be made available to the Oireachtas as soon as possible.
The increasingly imbalanced state of Gaelic football is merely one symptom of our imbalanced society. Ireland's current model, with so much development focused on the capital, precludes the kind of regional balance required for Ireland - and the GAA - to thrive.
The cost of the new National Children’s Hospital which has almost doubled in four years will have significant knock on effects on the rest of the health service. Who is ultimately going to pay for the cost overruns?
700,000 on healthcare waiting lists, 500,000 homes without broadband, over 11,000 people homeless – a result of Government policy failing to tackle causes - Social Justice Ireland publishes National Social Monitor Winter 2018.
In order to improve the wellbeing of everyone in society, at all stages of the life cycle, it is vital that our policies address the causes of problems rather than their symptoms only. It is through this lens that Social Justice Ireland examines the ten policy areas in the National Social Monitor.
With 800,000 people in poverty, record numbers on healthcare waiting lists and more than 3,800 children homeless, Ireland is a profoundly unequal place. Inequality hurts the economy, leading to unstable economic growth and employment, higher debt, housing bubbles and increased homelessness. Substantial evidence has emerged in recent years to support the view that economies and societies perform better across a number of different metrics, from better health to lower crime rates, where there is less inequality.
With 10,000 people - including 3,600 children - homeless, 72,000 mortgages in arrears, and 86,000 households on social housing waiting lists, it can hardly be denied that Government policy is a dramatic failure.
The Government has today published its National Reform Programme 2018, as submitted to the European Commission. In informing this process Social Justice Ireland submitted two papers to the Department of An Taoiseach - our comprehensive Europe2020 report and our analysis on the Country Specific Recommendations set out in the 2018 Country Report for Ireland.
A report published yesterday by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has criticised Ireland’s performance in key areas such as health and housing.
