Morgan Kelly has published a downbeat assessment of Ireland’s prospects for debt stabilisation in today’s Irish Times. As part of this, he provides a very powerful indictment of the Irish bank loan guarantee and Anglo bailout.
Category: Uncategorized
Frank McDonald at last admits that all is not well in climate land, but fails to find fault with the advocates of climate policy. Anne Jolis is more strident.
There has been a fair amount of discussion on this blog about issues of constitutional reform. Some readers may be interested in a interdisciplinary conference to be held on Friday afternoon, 21st May, at the Clarion Hotel, IFSC which includes contributions from economists, political scientists and lawyers on the question ‘Does Ireland need Constitutional Reform. Programme below and further details from eoin.carolan@ucd.ie.
The UCD Constitutional Studies Group presents a conference on
Does Ireland need constitutional reform?
with the support of the School of Law, UCD.
Clarion Hotel, IFSC
May 21st, 2010.
Conference schedule
Session 1: Why constitutional reform?
1.00pm: An Iterative Constitution: dynamics of a rule-based legal system – Dr. Stephen Kinsella.
1.20pm: Re-placing the Constitution in the context of reform – Dr. Maria Cahill.
1.40pm: The problems of public understanding and constitutional reform – Dr. Oran Doyle.
2.00pm: Questions and discussion.
Session 2: Electoral and parliamentary reform
2.20pm: Reforming the Seanad – Senator Ivana Bacik.
2. 40pm: Is electoral reform the wrong answer to the right question? – Prof. David Farrell.
3.00pm: “Relaying the playing field – Implications of political reform for the constitutional law ground rules of political competition – Dr. John O’Dowd.
3.20pm: Questions and discussion.
3.45pm: Coffee break.
Session 3: Improving public governance
4.00pm: Sacred spaces and blurred boundaries: Administrative reform and constitutional governance – Muiris MacCarthaigh.
4.20pm: Enhancing government accountability to the Oireachtas – Eoin O’Malley
4.40pm: An accountability branch of government? – Dr. Eoin Carolan
5.00pm: The place of the media in the constitution – Dr. Carol Coulter.
5.20pm: Questions and discussion.
5.45pm: Close of conference.
Here‘s an interesting report on the Irish residential property market prepared by Karl Deeter’s Irish Mortgage Brokers in association with PropertyWeek.ie & Frank Quinn (Senior College Dun Laoghaire). Its conclusion: “residential investment property is overvalued currently by an average of 37% in Dublin, 43% in Cork, and 39% in Galway.”
The current issue of the New Yorker has a profile of Esther Duflo. In the article, the views of Angus Deaton on the limitations of randomised controlled trials are assessed as wondering if “someone put sand in Angus’s toothpaste”. Readers will find the offending substance here.
You will undoubtedly make your own assessment of the following direct quote from Duflo in the New Yorker piece: “I want a baby goat” she mused. “I’ll take good care of it”.