Opinion

There is perhaps nobody as significant to the story of collecting Ireland’s oral folk tradition as Séamus Ennis, who was born a hundred years ago this May.

Addiction is an illness, not a moral decision, and people suffering through it deserve dignity and proper healthcare, writes Anne Buckley.

The Department of Housing’s changes to rules on building heights are yet another attack on local democracy. Maybe they should stop all the meddling and just build some homes, writes a DIT lecturer.

Marjorie Hasler didn’t live to see women vote in a general election for the first time. But she was at the heart of the activism that brought it about.

Even if there is no data from the US or other foreign governments in Amazon Web Services data centres in Dublin, Ireland has become a significant actor within the international infrastructure of AWS. That comes with responsibilities.

“Being an anxious liberal I worried about whether there is a fine line between wholesome giffing and, well, minstrelsy,” a reader wrote. There is, writes our advice columnist.

The Irish courts are in the midst of making changes that will make it easier for those they consider The Right Sort to report on cases, and make it harder for The Wrong Sort.

Banning “if-and-when” contacts would be one major step to take.

The report proposes the establishment of a new independent Corporate Crime Agency with its own statutory mandate to investigate corporate offences, writes a UCD law lecturer.

If Shannon is the obvious fulcrum of Irish collusion with Saudi human rights abuses, Dublin’s financial services may be a less obvious, but no less important, one, writes a UCD political economy lecturer.

Michael D Higgins may have won the race to the Áras, but Peter Casey took the podium in the media, garnering the most coverage of any candidate, writes a media analyst and DCU researcher.

Figures out there for rates of precarious in Ireland work vary wildly, because there’s no agreed definition of the term. Something needs to be done, writes a researcher for the think tank TASC.

How can the state give space to citizen journalism to take different approaches from the mainstream media, and provide counternarratives and challenge authorities, while imposing some accountability?

A rule for life, from one of our cartoonists.

Irexit would generate even worse economic outcomes than Brexit alone, research from two economists suggests.

A reader asked to what extent Irish drinking culture is something non-Irish need to adopt in order to integrate. Ebun offers some advice.

How could it be that the Irish capital, with its population advantage over the rest of the island, has failed to challenge at the top level of hurling in the same manner that it has come to dominate Gaelic football?

An analysis of articles from nine major news outlets from 9 to 24 September, by a PhD researcher at DCU School of Communications.

In the fourth and final part of this series, Paul Kearns challenges readers to his Plan-et Dublin Quiz.

Recent research finds that large pharmaceutical companies shift profits to and through Ireland to cut their global tax bills. It isn’t fair, writes UCD political-economy lecturer Andy Storey.

Only reliable data will help us assess whether An Garda Síochána is meeting its obligations to protect human rights.

Other cities are waking up to the connection between tech growth, inequality, and housing – and looking at how companies can step up to help.

“Without empathy, thousands of our fellow citizens who are homeless will become irretrievably, permanently other. But they are not other.”

“It’s a truism that if you work too long in any large organisation, your understanding of reality gradually warps,” writes a former council planner.

For some of the food-related place names, the move from Irish to English has masked their resonance and origins, writes a DIT lecturer and chef.

How can seemingly similar planning applications get very different responses from the council? In part two of our insider’s guide, an ex-Dublin City Council planner explains.

During his Ireland tour, the author and former slave found “receptive audiences keen to link their own political aspirations to his”.

Advice on how to navigate the Planning Department of Dublin City Council, from someone in the know.

“I have been known to litter-pick toilet roll inserts and hot-drink holders to take them home for the compost heap,” writes our guerilla gardening columnist.

“It was odd that we had to wait for two hours for corporations’ advertisements – that they were given priority,” writes asylum seeker Evgeny Shtorn.

O’Meara’s Irish House wasn’t your normal drinking establishment.

“It is time to connect the dots, and stop the long arm of property assets reaching into the pockets of citizens,” writes Joseph Kilroy.

While you’re trying to save water you might still be wondering how to look after those wilting flowers in your garden or windowsill, writes guerilla gardener Ciaran O’Byrne.

An analysis from University College Dublin shows that the average Dublin city-centre commuter could save 86 hours a year by switching their car for a bicycle.

Patrick Byrne was a purveyor of incendiary ideas on eighteenth-century Grafton Street.

The solution to Dublin’s infrastructure woes isn’t to try to move people elsewhere, it’s to invest in the city, writes DIT local-development and planning lecturer Odran Reid.

The proposals to pull down this historic public housing mark a new low in the social cleansing of our city, writes Councillor Éilis Ryan.

Dublin City Council looks set to sell lands near IKEA to a big-box retailer, which could bring more jobs to Ballymun. While welcome, the move again highlights the stagnation of the suburb’s centre.

As the neighbourhood changes, what can this grey monolith show us about the connection between people, buildings and the place they share? asks an architect.

Water is key to development, to industry, to house building, and to food production. So here are some suggestions for how to solve our supply problems, writes DIT lecturer Odran Reid.

The hidden histories of Tailors’ Hall.

It’s a common refrain, but the figures just don’t bear it out, writes Mick Byrne of the Dublin Tenants Association.

The area needs a greater mix of incomes, and building a Lidl and a six-storey student accommodation won’t help with that, writes DIT lecturer Odran Reid.

“What’s often overlooked in the broad sweep of articles and statistics about homelessness is that homelessness itself is a trauma,” writes Christine O’Donnell.

The idea that large social-housing developments are doomed to dystopia is rarely challenged. But it is wrong, write three housing experts.

The portrayal of psychosis in “Tribes” was sensitive, contextualised and humane. Unfortunately, this is generally not the case.

Private businesses shape Dubliners’ lives in fragmented ways. Local government needs more power so it can mould the city’s overall form and feel, argue two geographers.

“I get to see how creativity and expression can have an effect on the lives of people living life on the edge of society, and help them somewhat in their struggle,” writes poet Karl Parkinson.

“If we look at the major policy initiatives over the last two years, it is hard to draw any other conclusion,” writes Mick Byrne.

“I naively believed my support system would carry me through any fallouts and it would never come to that,” writes Christine O’Donnell.

Pay for people working in hotels, bars and restaurants is half the national average. But this can be hard, physical, sometimes dangerous work.

“The coach unpiles and I am in my first Portaloo queue of the day, and thank the holy spirit it’s clean…” A poet’s journey to perform at a summer festival.

I’ll go the shop, into the butchers, need chicken for the dinner, a fella asked me once how many chickens do you think get eaten everyday, think about it he says, like you’ve chicken in so many things …

Researcher Chris Lowe says some figures going around about “bogus disability claims” are exaggerated, and others are just wrong.

“I always see myself in paintings, former me, me now, as a child, me not yet alive, the all inspiring I in the us,” writes Karl Parkinson, in this saunter through current Dublin exhibitions.

Ultimately, the RTB is based on the logic that the most vulnerable actor within the rental sector – the tenant – should be tasked with ensuring landlords play by the rules. This simply does not work, writes Mick Byrne.

For the last year or so in Ireland, a particular typeface has become associated with protest and politically progressive movements. How did that come about?

While average pay is still high, there appears to be a creeping two-tier system, with many employees on fixed-term, low-pay contracts doing routine work, writes researcher Alicja Bobek.

Life among the hip, smart, cool, transy, funky poet children, the sons, daughters and othered of Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg and Patti Smith.

We should be much more imaginative about how we could use this land to tackle wider social and economic problems, write Philip Comerford and Thomas Legge.

We have mapped 106 locations we believe have residential swimming pools, writes UCD geography lecturer Eoin O’Mahony and two of his students.

Far more construction workers today are self-employed than before the crash, which means they’re getting lower wages and fewer protections.

In his monthly column, poet and performer Karl Parkinson will reflect on arts and the city. Here’s the first installment.

The scaffolding of our city is suffering from systematic disinvestment, writes Mick Byrne, a researcher at UCD’s School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice.

The low-wages and flexible hours in the hospitality sector are good for employers, but not for employees. It’s time the benefits were passed on, writes Alicja Bobek.

The better you get to know a culture, the better you get to know informal ways of communication, the more you realise you’re an outsider.

When Nicky Daly called her local Garda station to report racist harassment by a man with a baseball bat, she was told somebody would come along. Why didn’t they?

Moving the seat of government to a purpose-built complex somewhere else could allow Kildare Street to flourish as the vibrant cultural quarter it was meant to be, writes Thomas Legge.

Dublin Bus wants more productivity out of its workers. That will require less congested roads, and an updated route map, says transport lecturer David O’Connor.

“It’s not easy – I know, I’ve been working in this field for years. But communicating with us is your job,” writes Liz Carolan.

It’s also about strategic positioning and posturing as Dublin’s transport network faces a potential transformation, writes DIT transport planning lecturer David O’Connor.

There is no word for someone who’s not white Irish who settles here, which marks them as part of the community of Ireland. Does that mean they’ll never feel at home?

Gangland exists for two reasons: prohibition and inequality. Those who profess an urgent desire to address the situation are determined to tackle neither.

Today, tenants in the private rented sector again find themselves at the sharp end of housing inequality, and again ignored by those whose decisions create that inequality.

The arts, although saturated with middle-class voices, are getting an infusion of working-class blood. It’s an exciting moment for our society.

Most debates about the housing crisis lead back to one place: the acute shortage of social housing. Tenant purchase schemes are making that shortage worse.

Rising rents mean single parents are being forced further and further away from those who can support them. They are “austerity nomads”.

With every meal, every class of tai chi, every day I don’t pay some dickhead €20 to feel like a human being, I’m reclaiming my right to pride and dignity.

People comment on what they call my “strong Dublin accent” a lot, a phrase that belittles how I speak, because it’s not just an accent, it’s a dialect – one with a rich history, one I’m proud of.

When you isolate people, they start to form their own societies, receiving legitimacy from each other instead of the dominant culture. Enter Dublin hip-hop, writes Dara Quigley.

What has been driving the housing crisis in Dublin is the absence of credit within Ireland’s financial system – in other words, from Irish banks, writes Mick Byrne, a researcher at UCD.

When your TD calls this month looking for your vote, ask why they should have their travel costs to work paid when you have to pay your travel costs out of your taxed income, which is much less that the TD’s salary of €87,258 per year.

The government lacks the self-awareness to realise that Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton should be turning up at the closings of food banks, not the openings.

These days – the poor, the working poor, the working class, the middle-class – almost all of us are screwed. The wealth is trickling upwards to a very few.

Dara Quigley asks why, for those with little spare cash, Dublin’s centre is so unwelcoming. And why do we put up with it?

We are witnessing another round of finance-driven urban development, a fact which speaks to the current poverty of imagination and ambition among those who hold the levers of power.

Nasir Jamal, chief reporter for the newspaper Dawn, gives the view from Pakistan on why many of his countrymen and women are leaving to chase their dreams in Europe.

Dublin City Council senior planner Kieran Rose explains some of his past housing policy successes, and asks how we can build on them in the future.

Could this be the first transport plan in decades that just might lead to a genuine improvement in quality of life for Dubliners?

Until we build more homes, we need to raise the rent supplement, introduce rent certainty and make several other changes, writes Bob Jordan, chief executive of housing charity Threshold.

Developers are not the only option in town when it comes to building houses, particularly on local authority-owned land.

Dublin’s housing problem stems from this: at a state level, housing policy is dominated by a politically motivated rural ideology.

Why doesn’t Dublin have more zebra crossings? Is it because planners here have a fundamentally pessimistic view of human behaviour?