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Gender-based hate crimes (GBHC) are an undefined and ambiguous category of hate crime and are thus a rapidly evolving area for academics and policymakers. This policy paper provides clarity on how GBHC are defined, identified, and investigated in both England and Wales, in the UK, and Ireland.
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The extent and sophistication of online political campaigning during democratic processes was largely overlooked until lacunas in election regulation were identified around digital advertising following the 2016 Brexit referendum and US Presidential elections. Since then, both research and regulation have largely focused on the three main issues identified in the 2016 election: election advertising, mis/disinformation and foreign interference (Siapera & Kirk,2022).
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Adolescence is a time of growing independence from family for the majority of young people, however this does not mean that parents no longer play a significant supportive role in young people’s lives. Parents may be the first to notice changes in mood or behaviour that signal distress in a young person, and they are likely to be contacted if concerns are raised by teachers. The decision of whether or not to seek professional support then frequently rests with parents, and it is parents who must provide support to the young person as best they can while seeking support.
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Neoliberalism and new public management began to impact on the Irish higher educational system in the late 1990s and became embedded at different times and to varying degrees in particular Irish universities (Lynch et al, 2012; Lynch, 2015; Mercille and Murphy, 2017). With it came a focus on research, and particularly on research outputs generated by competitive research funding.
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Some policies are not as effective as they could be, and “sludge” might be one reason for that. Sludge is the term that behavioural scientists use to describe excessive or unjustified frictions that make it harder for people to do what they want (Sunstein 2021; Thaler 2018). These frictions can come in the form of paperwork burdens, complex application processes, long waiting times, difficult cancellation processes, and many other ways. Concepts closely related to sludge are administrative burden, red-tape, and transaction costs
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The National Housing Strategy for Disabled People 2022-2027 (NHSFDP, 2022) was launched in January 2022 with the aim of building on the work achieved through the National Housing Strategy for Disabled People 2011-2016 (which was been extended to 2021). The aim of the strategy was to establish a framework for the provision of disabled friendly housing in Ireland. It was intended to play part of the government’s plans to increase the number of accessible and affordable housing alongside the Housing for All plan (HFA) and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD, 2008), which Ireland has signed and thus has obligations under the convention.
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This research examines the uptake of clean energy technology under a range of policy scenarios. Ireland’s climate ambition has increased significantly with the recent Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act (2021) setting out Ireland’s objective of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 and targeting a 51% reduction of GHG emissions by 2030 (7% per annum) relative to 2018
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This paper addresses the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on children. It is based on desk-based research carried out in the first half of 2021 for a report commissioned by Barnardos. The aim was to assess the various social, economic and political factors shaping the context of policy and provision for children in Ireland now and in the short-term future, with particular emphasis on the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Policymakers all over the world have started using behavioural public policy instruments to encourage behavioural change in various areas such as health, finance, and the environment (UN Behavioural Science Group 2021). These instruments rely on insights from behavioural economics and psychology on how people behave and how they interact with their decision environments. The behaviourally informed approach contrasts with policies that are guided by theoretical models on how people should behave in given situations such as the rational actor model from economics (Thaler 2015). Behavioural insights allow policymakers to better anticipate how people actually react to policies and to design behaviourally informed interventions that can help citizens to make better choices for themselves and for society (Hansen 2019).
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Under Innovation 2020 (ICSTI, 2020) the Irish government committed to almost doubling the science budget from €2.9 billion to €5 billion over a five-year period. In 2020, public expenditure on research and innovation in Ireland was under a billion euro, with just over a billion by Irish higher educational institutions in 2020 (DFHERIS, 2022a). Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) is the largest competitive funder of research in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) and the most highly funded. Its importance is to increase further given the decision (DHERIS, 2022a) to combine it with the more modestly funded Irish Research Council (IRC), the largest competitive funder of research in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. The merger is depicted as facilitating multi-disciplinary research and increasing the number of female researchers.
