Digital Commons Network^™

Inéire Report And Policy Recommendations, Arjumand Younus, Simon Caton, Muhammad Atif Qureshi, Mingyeong Jeon, Arefeh Kazemi, Sandra Ruiz Moriana

Articles

Over the years there has been an increased amount of immigration into Ireland leading to the formation of a multicultural society. More recently however immigration has become a controversial issue within Ireland leading to growing anti-immigrant sentiment and political conflict (Costa, 2023) reported as early as 2018 in a report by Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and Economic & Social Research Institute (McGinnity, Grotti, Russell, Fahey, et al., 2018). This project aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the factors behind such sentiment and its consequences by means of collecting comprehensive data on it and performing a quantitative and …

Inéire: An Interpretable Nlp Pipeline Summarizing Inclusive Policy Making Concerning Migrants In Ireland, Arefeh Kazem, Arjumand Younus, Mingyeong Jeon, Muhammad Atif Qureshi, Simon Caton

Articles

Reaching marginal and other migrant communities to elicit their political views and opinions is a well-known challenge. Social media has enabled a certain amount of online activism and participation, especially in societies with abundant multicultural identities. However, it can be quite challenging to isolate the voice of the migrant in English-speaking countries, especially with an abundance of content in English on social media. In this paper, we pursue a case study of Ireland’s Twitter landscape, specifically migrant and native activists. We present a methodology that can accurately ( >80% ) isolate the Irish migrant voice with as little as 25 …

Definition And Characteristic Features Of A ‘Cultural Flashpoint’: A Case Study Of Exploring Masculinities, A Controversial Gender And Education Programme In Ireland, Joan Hanafin, Paul Conway, Cormac O Beaglaoich, Jack Hanafin

Articles

The concept ‘cultural flashpoint’ (CF) has not been fully defined or described. The authors test this concept through the prism of a controversial gender-focused Irish school programme, Exploring Masculinities (EM). Adopting an instrumental case study methodology, they use media content analysis to develop a temporal trajectory of the CF, describe its shape, explicit and implied contentious themes, and its process. They identify characteristic features of a cultural flashpoint: (i) a focal issue, event and/or object; (ii) conflict; (iii) bounded time period; (iv) the involvement of exo- and multi-sectoral individuals and groups; (v) randomness, opaqueness and conflation among its expressions; and …

Rethinking Social Enterprise Policy Making In Ireland – Untangling Proportionate, Disproportionate And Unengaged Sectoral Policy Contributions, Gerard Doyle

Articles

The National Social Enterprise Policy of Ireland was launched in 2019 following a slow and episodic process. The aim of the paper is to examine the development and implementation of the National Social Enterprise Policy. In particular the interaction between key sectoral stakeholders in the development of the policy and the primary influences on the process. The results of a substantial qualitative enquiry details the complex set of relationships underpinning the development of social enterprise policy in a multi-level governance framework. It situates the National Social Enterprise Policy in an environment unusually susceptible to sub-sectoral advocacy and highlights the particular …

Prescribing Patterns Of Myopia Control Contact Lenses Among Optometrists In Ireland, Michael Moore, Daniel Ian Flitcroft, James Loughman

Articles

Purpose

This retrospective analysis of electronic medical record (EMR) data investigated the prescribing patterns of soft myopia control contact lens (MCCL) treatments since their introduction in Ireland in 2017.

Methods

Anonymised EMR data were sourced from 33 optometry practices in Ireland from 2017 to 2021 to determine the number of practices prescribing MCCLs to myopic children 5–18 years old. In MCCL-prescribing practices, the proportion of contact lens wearing children fitted with MCCLs and the proportion of progressive (≤−0.25 D/year) myopic children fitted with MCCLs were determined. Logistic regression was used to determine which factors influenced the likelihood of being prescribed …

Review: Mary Kenny, The Way We Were: Catholic Ireland Since 1922, Eamon Maher

Articles

Book review: Mary Kenny, The Way We Were: Catholic Ireland Since 1922 (Dublin: Columba Books, 2022), 450 pages.

Racialization Of Muslim Students In Australia, Ireland, And The United States: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Melanie C. Brooks, Miriam D. Ezzani Miriam D. Ezzani, Youcef Sai, Fida Sanjakdar

Articles

The purpose of this qualitative cross-cultural case study was to better understand how Muslim students living in Australia, Ireland, and the United States navigated racism to identify ways in which school leaders and teachers can better address the structural, historical, and socioeconomic roots of racial injustice, discrimination, and ongoing oppression. Data collection was guided by a shared interview protocol that asked questions regarding family background, personal interests, identity, and friendships with a focus on their experiences of anti-Muslim racism in secondary schools. Findings suggested that Muslim students navigated racialization by (de)constructing their Muslimness, seeking voice, navigating between inclusion and exclusion, …

Watchdogs Of The Economy: The Development Of Irish Economics Profession’S Independent Voice, Joseph K. Fitzgerald, Brendan O'Rourke

Articles

Histories of the development of professions show a profession’s relationship with the state as key to its authority. Yet professions, to gain technocratic authority, also strive to depoliticise their discourses to gain technocratic authority. This dilemmatic tension is particularly true for the economics profession. The historical development of the Irish economics provides an interesting case, where a complicated relationship with the state ultimately strengthened the profession within a society. An initial formalisation trajectory of Irish economics was thrown off course by the formation of an independent Irish state in the 1920s. This marked a period of isolation for the profession …

Identifying Novel Data-Driven Dietary Patterns Via Dimensionality Reduction And Associations With Socioeconomic Profile And Health Outcomes In Ireland, Daniel Burke, Annemarie E. Bennett, Paul Hynds, Anushree Priyadarshini

Articles

Dietary patterns and body mass index (BMI) play a significant role in the development of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), which are the leading cause of mortality worldwide, including Ireland. A cross-sectional survey was conducted across Ireland to collate respondents’ socioeconomic profiles, health status, and dietary patterns with a representative sample size of 957 adult respondents. Principal component analysis (PCA) and statistical analyses were subsequently employed. To the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to use recent (2021) nationally representative data to characterise dietary patterns in Ireland via dimensionality reduction. Five distinct dietary patterns (“meat-focused”, “dairy/ovo-focused”, “vegetable-focused”, “seafood-focused”, and “potatofocused”) were …