Society

The solution to our economic crisis is for rich people to pay less tax, apparently. By David Johnson.

The construction of a dedicated children's detention centre at Oberstown has been put on hold. While plans for the centre have not been entirely shelved, there is, worryingly, no clear indication of a timeframe for its completion. By Paul Walsh.

Targets set by Minister James Reilly for reducing the number of people waiting on trolleys and wait times for hospital treatment are unambitious, but if achieved they may be reason for cautious optimism. By Sara Burke.

There should be no debate; in using its financial muscle to extort under threat tens of billions from the Irish exchequer, what the ECB is doing – with the complicity of the EU and the Irish Government complicit - is a crime. By Diarmuid O'Flynn.

That we have a major problem in the Irish economy at the moment is beyond question. How to solve it? The same way you solve any other problem, and using the same basic principles – go back to the source, then take whatever steps are necessary.

The Government's Action Plan on Jobs will, by their own estimates, create no new jobs. By Michael Taft.

Something important happened in January. A group of determined women workers took a stand and won. By Eoin Ó Broin.

For many people the start of 2012 brought only bad news. Cuts to vital services like DEIS teachers and Community Employment schemes have caused distress and anger.

Stealth charges and tax hikes squeezed already hard-pressed families more than they can bear.

On Monday 9 January 2011 a group of women workers from the La Senza lingerie chain occupied the company’s store in Liffey Valley Clondalkin after the company had sacked them and withheld their pay. Eoin Ó Broin  spoke to the spokesperson for the workers, 20-year-old Tara Keane from Inchicore, about the workers' experience of the week long occupation.

Today marks the date in 1992 when the parents of a pregnant 14-year-old took their daughter to England for an abortion. She had been raped by a friend of the family. That same day in the High Court, Mr Justice Declan Costello issued a temporary injunction to prevent the abortion. Only hours after they had left, the family returned to Ireland. This became known as the X Case.

The Fiscal Treaty is not particularly coherent economics, nor does it appear to be particularly coherent law. By Darren O'Donovan.

The word at the forefront of everyone’s mind for the next two weeks will be “referendum” – whether one is required or, from a more jaundiced perspective, whether the Government has leveraged the Fiscal Treaty text sufficiently to evade one. In this piece, I want to explore why even the most careerist of us should not envy the position of Attorney General Maire Whelan this weekend.

If someone wants to wear pyjamas, good for them. By Alistair Fraser.

I find the recent pyjamas hype pretty sickening. I have a job. I consider myself lucky, actually. I could quite easily be out of work; could quite easily have never found my way to the job I have, which I enjoy a lot.