The House on an Irish Hillside
The House on an Irish Hillside

Author: Felicity Hayes-McCoy

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Published: 2012-06-07

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 1444730339

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'From the moment I crossed the mountain I fell in love. With the place, which was more beautiful than any place I'd ever seen. With the people I met there. And with a way of looking at life that was deeper, richer and wiser than any I'd known before. When I left I dreamt of clouds on the mountain. I kept going back.' We all lead very busy lives and sometimes it's hard to find the time to be the people we want to be. Twelve years ago Felicity Hayes-McCoy left the hectic pace of the city and returned to Ireland to make a new life in a remarkable house on the stunning Dingle peninsula. Beautifully written, this is a life-affirming tale of rediscovering lost values and being reminded of the things that really matter.

NAMA-Land
NAMA-Land

Author: Frank Connolly

Publisher: Gill & Macmillan Ltd

Published: 2017-11-03

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 0717175480

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The National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) was created in 2009 to contain the spiralling fallout from Ireland's property crisis. Its job as Ireland's 'bad bank' was to act impartially to get the maximum return from the sale of assets for the Irish people and help pay down the state's massive debts. Now, after NAMA has presided over the transfer of €70 billion in assets, the Irish economy is once again beginning to recover. But the basic arithmetic of assets valued and assets sold hides a multitude of sins. Beneath NAMA's veneer of impartiality lies a world built on political patronage and nepotism, rife with conflicts of interest and vulnerable to shocking instances of corruption. Here, and for the first time, bestselling investigative journalist, Frank Connolly, unravels the scandal at the heart of NAMA's mission. Based on exclusive interviews with a wide range of interested parties, NAMA-land is the shocking story of how the sale of public assets conspired to disinherit the Irish people and enrich a new elite. 'Frank Connolly's careful and penetrating investigative research has exposed critical truths about malfeasance in high places and the often ugly workings of political power generally, actions that have caused great harm to the general population.' Noam Chomksy 'Without Frank Connolly we would not know about the scale of corruption that has infected Irish political and business life. He is the best investigative journalist we've had in this country.' Eamon Dunphy

Property, Family and the Irish Welfare State
Property, Family and the Irish Welfare State

Author: Michelle Norris

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-11-09

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 3319445677

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This book examines the long-term development of the Irish welfare state since the late nineteenth century. It contests the consensus view that Ireland, like other Anglophone countries, has historically operated a liberal welfare regime which forces households to rely mainly on the market to maintain their standard of living. Drawing on case studies and key statistical data, this book argues that the Irish welfare state developed differently from most other Western European countries until recent decades. Norris's original line of argument makes the case that Ireland’s regime was distinctive in terms of both focus and purpose in that Ireland’s welfare state was shaped by the power of small farmers and moral teaching and intended to support a rural, agrarian and familist social order rather than an urban working class and industrialised economy. A well-researched and methodical study, this book will be of great interest to scholars of social policy, sociology and Irish history.

Who Owns Ireland
Who Owns Ireland

Author: Kevin Cahill

Publisher: The History Press

Published: 2021-07-30

Total Pages: 409

ISBN-13: 0750986611

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It is the barbed wire entanglement that tortures yet frees in the long story of this small island on 'the dark edge of Europe'. It defined the national struggle for independence far more than any other single issue. The famine between 1845 and 1850 killed a million of the island's population of 8 million and drove another million into exile. This event chopped Irish history in half, demonstrating as nothing else could that without security of tenure for a normal life span you were at the mercy of landowners. This book is not about the famine, but about the key event that followed it: the extraordinary redistribution of land from mainly aristocratic landed estates to small farmers. This redistribution took over 150 years, from famine's end to the closure of the Land Commission in 1999, and was achieved with some civility and far less violence than the actual independence struggle itself. Who Owns Ireland is a startling expose of Ireland's most valuable asset: its land. Kevin Cahill's investigations reveal the breakdown of ownership of the land itself across all thirty-two counties, and show the startling truth about the people and institutions who own the ground beneath our feet.

The House Where It Happened
The House Where It Happened

Author: Martina Devlin

Publisher:

Published: 2014-08

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 9781781999721

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The House Where It Happened is inspired by a true but little-known story about the last conviction for witchcraft in Ireland. In 1711, in a remote corner of Antrim, eight women from the Ulster-Scots community were accused of being witches by a pretty young newcomer. A group trial followed, causing a sensation. What happened was Ireland's version of the notorious Salem epidemic. But why did a seemingly normal girl claim she was bewitched? And why did a community turn against eight respectable women? Could the answer lie in the strange house where the supernatural activity was said to have taken place? Martina Devlin has fictionalised a compelling episode from history, transforming it into a spine-chilling tale.

Housing Shock
Housing Shock

Author: Hearne, Rory

Publisher: Policy Press

Published: 2020-06-03

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 1447353935

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The unprecedented housing and homelessness crisis in Ireland is having profound impacts on Generation Rent, the wellbeing of children, worsening wider inequality and threatening the economy. Hearne contextualises the Irish housing crisis within the broader global housing situation by examining the origins of the crisis in terms of austerity, marketisation and the new era of financialisation, where global investors are making housing unaffordable and turning it into an asset for the wealthy. He brings to the fore the perspectives of those most affected, new housing activists and protesters whilst providing innovative global solutions for a new vision for affordable, sustainable homes for all.

The Crocodile by the Door
The Crocodile by the Door

Author: Selina Guinness

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2012-09-27

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 0241960231

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The Crocodile by the Door by Selina Guinness - shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award - is a remarkable, compelling and moving memoir of a farm, a family and a home. When Selina Guinness and her partner Colin, both young academics, moved in with Selina's uncle Charles, an elderly bachelor, they had no idea what the coming years held for them: a crash course in farming, tense discussions with helicopter-borne property developers, human tragedy, and the challenge of dragging a quasi-feudal estate at the edge of Dublin into the twenty-first century. The Crocodile by the Door - a dazzling debut memoir that will appeal to fans of Edmund de Waal, William Fiennes and Richard Benson's The Farm - tells this remarkable story. 'Something close to a small masterpiece ... enchanting and hopeful' Miranda Seymour, Daily Telegraph (five stars) 'A surprisingly entertaining primer on the travails of farming today,from ungovernable sheep to unfathomable bureaucracy; a fascinating glimpse of what had become of the Anglo-Irish by the late 20th century and into the 21st; an elegant modern pastoral and, at the same time, an astute dismantling of that genre; and a meditation on the meaning of labour, and on how hard work shapes identity as well as achievement.... A remarkable book' Belinda McKeon, Guardian 'Guinness is an astute observer and stylish chronicler of landscape, architecture and human character. ... she describes her domestic setbacks and achievements with engaging candour.' Irish Times 'A memoir so exceptional that it deserves to be ranked as the Irish Book of the Year' Irish Independent 'A very fine writer with a lovely turn of phrase ... Stories need adversity and the overcoming of obstacles and The Crocodile by the Door has plenty' Spectator 'Astutely chronicling the wider story of Ireland's downfall through the prism of the farming life, Guinness's book is the unexpected hit of the year' Sunday Business Post 'Beautifully wrought ... The book is rich in beautiful imagery ... This is the story of bringing a landscape to life, and it is glorious' Evening Herald