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Ireland’s demograpics shaped by migration
October 8, 2012
Irish News People & Society, peter singhateh 1 Comment
Ireland’s demograpics shaped by migration.
ANALYSIS: IRELAND IS the only territory in the world in which the population today is smaller than it was two centuries ago. Migration is the reason for this unique decline. Coinciding with the beginning of the first era of globalisation, the Famine caused a tradition of emigration to arise that changed this island forever.
If outflows of people have made Ireland stand out from all other countries over two centuries, the pattern of arrivals over the past decade has made it exceptional among its European peers.
Almost one in eight people resident here last year was not Irish. That is more than double the proportion a decade ago and far above the proportion in pre-Celtic tiger times.
By the standards of the rest of Europe, Ireland was one of the most homogeneous societies in the early 1990s. By last year it had become one of the continent’s most heterogeneous countries…
Lessons in early education from New Zealand
October 2, 2012
Irish News Early Education, People & Society, peter singhateh Leave a comment
Lessons in early education from New Zealand.
When it comes to early childhood care and education, Ireland is, in ways, where New Zealand was in the 1980s, according to Prof Linda Mitchell of the University of Waikato in Hamilton. She was in Dublin recently to explain what a 10-year strategic plan, which was started in New Zealand in 2002, meant to children under the age of six and their families.
“We’ve moved on – at least it shows you can move,” she says, sitting in the basement offices on Merrion Street of Start Strong, an alliance of organisations and individuals advocating improved early care and education in Ireland.
With New Zealand and Ireland sharing certain similarities, such as population size, climate, landscape and importance of agriculture, its work in developing services for children aged zero to six is seen as offering valuable lessons.
During her visit, which was organised by Start Strong, Mitchell met the expert advisory group appointed to help draw up the National Early Years Strategy. She also briefed members of the Oireachtas, although, ironically, publication of the wording for the children’s rights referendum that same morning affected the numbers attending her presentation.
Back in 1986, New Zealand became only the second country in the world, after Iceland, to integrate early childhood education services into its ministry of education…
Trocaire calls for EU ban on goods from settlements
October 2, 2012
Irish News People & Society, peter singhateh Leave a comment
Trocaire calls for EU ban on goods from settlements.
Trócaire has launched a campaign urging a ban on goods produced in Israeli settlements across the European Union.
Trócaire executive director Justin Kilcullen said the goods, which “are produced on the back of house demolitions, land confiscation, racial segregation and military occupation”, must be banned so as not to provide economic support to the illegal settlements.
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