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Introduction
Mary P Murphy Sociology, Maynooth University, Ireland. . Mary does research in Public Policy, particularly social security, labour market activation and low pay and specialises in gender. She also researches Irish civil society. A recent project is the H2020 funded ReInVest where I published handbooks on PAHRCA a Participatory Action Human Rights and Capability Approach . Funded with an IRC Coalesce award she is researching the concept of a Public Employment System in the context of changin
Additional affiliations
September 2007 - present
Education
September 2002 - June 2006
Publications
Publications (86)
There is growing interest in the impacts of financialisation on housing affordability and insecurity in the private rental sector, particularly financialisation 2.0 and the increased role of global real estate funds. This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of these impacts on housing systems and housing marginalisation by conceptually an...
This article joins with others in this special issue to examine the evolution of our understanding of how the coronavirus disease (COVID)-19 pandemic impacted policy ideas and routines across a wide variety of sectors of government activity. Did policy ideas and routines transform as a result of the pandemic or were they merely a continuation of th...
Our new special edition of Essays on Equality brings together contributions from an international network of researchers, activists and policymakers, drawing on their detailed country expertise to offer insights into how women around the world have been affected by Covid-19.
The essays take an intersectional approach, examining the pandemic experi...
We revise Atkinson’s concept of a ‘participation income’ (PI), repositioning it as a form of green conditional basic income that is anchored in a capabilities-oriented eco-social policy framework. This framework combines the capability approach with an ‘ethics of care’ to re-shape the focus of social policy on individuals’ capability to ‘take care...
Contemporary models of welfare capitalism have frequently been critiqued about their fit-for-purpose in provisioning for people's basic needs including care, and longer-term ecological sustainability. The Covid-19 pandemic has also exposed the need for better institutions and a new welfare architecture. We argue a post-productivist eco-social state...
Employment guidance theory and praxis promote long-term career development and access to decent work and sustainable jobs, yet the focus of public employment services in recent times has been influenced by policy matters of activation, conditionality and rapid job placement. While effective for some, it has been less effective for workers exposed t...
The past was a different country, and the future will be different too. The Covid-19 pandemic has brought in its wake massive unemployment, shifting attention away from pre-pandemic labour market challenges. More labour market turbulence can be expected in the context of the fourth industrial revolution, digitalisation and automation, as well as cl...
Leading Irish academics and policy practitioners present a current and comprehensive study of policy analysis in Ireland.
Contributors examine policy analysis at different levels of government and governance including international, national and local and in the civil service, as well as non-government actors such as NGOs, interest groups and thin...
In the introduction to the volume the editors offer an overview of concepts that will appear throughout the book and set the scene for readers with a summary of the Irish political and economic context. The chapter then sketches the kinds of policy analysis the volume encompasses, providing readers with a guide to the wide-ranging and diverse contr...
Chapter Twelve assess the relationship between civil society organisations (CSOs) and policy analysis in contemporary Ireland. Since the 1980s CSOs have assumed an increasingly important role in social, economic and environmental policy and have been resilient and versatile in their approach to engaging with policy formation. There are two themes e...
Introduction
Policy Analysis in Ireland constitutes the Irish element in the ever-expanding International Library of Policy Analysis series, edited by Michael Howlett and Iris Geva-May, and published by Policy Press. The volume provides unique insights into the state of policy analysis in Ireland, a topic that has only recently received significant...
Introduction
Over the past 30 years, civil society organisations (CSOs) have assumed an important role in Irish social, economic and environmental policy and have demonstrated resilience and versatility in their engagement with policy formation. Civil society has arguably led the social transformation of Ireland, as recent referenda have demonstrat...
In this introductory chapter, as editors, we offer an overview of concepts and set the scene with a brief summary of the Irish political and economic context. We then sketch the kinds of policy analysis the volume encompasses, providing readers with a guide to the wide-ranging and diverse contributions.
This short article reflects on observations from the forthcoming volume Policy Analysis in Ireland, edited by Hogan & Murphy. The volume forms part of the International Library of Policy Analysis series, which covers more than twenty countries, published by Policy Press and edited by Michael Howlett and Iris Geva-May. While various themes emerge fr...
The UK and Ireland responded to the rapid health and economic impacts of COVID‐19 by supporting incomes through job retention and job loss instruments, However distinct policy legacies, political and institutional differences between the two countries mean critical differences in both the nature and the relative weight placed on these instruments....
In this article we conceptualise feminist engagement with neo‐liberalism, austerity and crisis management and analyse potential to advance a feminist ‘recovery’ political agenda. Feminist discursive analysis of crisis and a focus on narrative enables analysis of continuity and change in feminist responses to the pandemic and exposes the nature of o...
https://www.socialeurope.eu/renewing-welfare-through-universal-entitlement-lessons-from-covid-19
Purpose
This paper addresses the labour market impacts of Covid-19, the necessity of active labour policy reform in response to this pandemic unemployment crisis and what trajectory this reform is likely to take as countries shift attention from emergency income supports to stimulating employment recovery.
Design/methodology/approach
The study dra...
https://www.socialeurope.eu/reconfiguring-welfare-in-an-eco-social-state-participation-income-and-universal-services.
This article focuses on multiple conditionalities in benefits and housing from the perspective of lone parents in Ireland. The Irish case echoes historical experiences elsewhere and is offered not as an exceptional or extreme case but as an in‐depth single case study and a lens for comparison. Although contemporary forms and combinations of conditi...
This chapter brings together capabilities and rights theory with a participative action and policy engaged framework, to provide an account of their practical operationalization in the context of marketisation in housing policy. It explores how the capabilities (particularly functionings, conversion factors, and agency) and rights of homeless famil...
This paper contributes to the analysis of policy making processes in the Irish context. It offers original insights into recent policy changes in Irish activation and social housing policy which, over the period of austerity, were subject to significant institutional reshaping and structural reforms including marketisation. A three I’s framework tr...
This paper discusses the outcomes of a participatory research process with homeless parents living in Dublin-based emergency accommodation, during which a critical appraisal of a range of government schemes was coconstructed. The focus is on examining the impacts on vulnerable families of the marketisation of social housing. This is examined throug...
Background:
Labour market policy (LMP) and its implementation have undergone rapid change internationally in the last three decades with a continued trend towards active LMP. In Ireland however, this shift has been more recent with ongoing reforms since 2012 and a concomitant move toward active labour market 'work-first' policy design (i.e. whereb...
This research examines how the framing of the business case for gender equality (BCGE) in the European Union (EU) translates in the Irish national context and how different actors have engaged with this framing exercise. A central concern is how gender knowledge is mobilized by different actors as they compete to shape discourse, policy and practic...
The paper examines various rationales for applying equality and human rights proofing mechanisms to fiscal policy. The principle of using available resources to the maximum to progressively realise human rights, and not to erode the revenue capacity of developing nations to do likewise, is at the heart of emerging human rights norms. To date, Irish...
Purpose: Ireland’s labour market policy has undergone rapid change in the last decade with reform of the policy and its implementation, and a shift towards active labour market workfirst policy design. In terms of reducing unemployment, it is considered a success. However, long-term unemployment and jobless households remain high. While the link be...
Institutional reconfigurations of Irish welfare architecture and specific policy regimes including social security, labour activation and employment regulation have reshaped the contemporary low-paid labour market with more focus on flexibility than security. Irish workers, particularly women, young people and vulnerable migrant workers are more li...
Ireland used the Great Recession as an opportunity to pursue controversial reforms to lone parent social security payments while ignoring a significantly larger group of Irish women, qualified adults, the partners of coupled social welfare claimants. A review of the international literature about partners and recent policy trends is used to context...
Comparatively slow in adopting any clear activation strategy, post-crisis Ireland crossed the Rubicon and rapidly took steps to implement a work-first labour activation strategy. The article maps and examines the interaction of three variables – ideational influences, political interests and institutional processes – to assess the nature of post-cr...
Examining the politics of Irish responses to crisis-related social security cuts gives insight into Irish agency and how crisis has shaped the contours of Irish civil society. Despite assertions of lack of protest, Irish retrenchment was resisted and sometimes partially defeated. Using political sociology frameworks to explore interactions between...
In this chapter, Fiona Dukelow and Mary Murphy sketch the landscape of research on welfare state change and set out some of the ways the impact of the economic crisis and the prospect structural change need to be informed by the lessons of previous research on how welfare states change and why. The chapter then proceeds to discuss a set of core str...
This chapter provides answers to four structural questions about the Irish welfare state: what is the Irish welfare state for, who delivers it, who benefits from it and who pays for it? The chapter outlines ambiguous and uneven patterns of reform across nine different areas of welfare. Change is evident but nuanced; the traditional mixed welfare mo...
With ‘Pathways to Work’, Ireland’s activation policy found opportunity in crisis to integrate Irish public employment services and income supports and make working age welfare more conditional. This targeted male breadwinner activation model means unequal access to enabling supports in new agencies ‘Intreo’ and ‘Solas’. Privatisation is evident in...
Mary Murphy and Fiona Dukelow set the scene for examining structural change in the Irish welfare state in the context of crisis and austerity. The chapter reviews the challenges the economic crisis and the crisis response has posed for the Irish welfare state. It argues that the lens by which the crisis has impacted on social policy must be widened...
This article examines the impact of the economic and social crisis in shaping political agency in women's and feminist organizations in the context of Irish austerity. Examining forms of political agency exercised by women in a range of gendered mobilizations, we isolate examples of defensive agency that seek to protect women's interests from fisca...
This book provides a critical and theoretically-informed assessment of the nature and types of structural change occurring in the Irish welfare state in the context of the 2008 economic crisis. Its overarching framework for conceptualising and analysing welfare state change and its political, economic and social implications is based around four cr...
Adding a gender dimension to the story of the Irish crisis deepens our understanding of crisis and necessary responses. Using gender both as category and process we see clear gendered patterns throughout the Irish crisis including patterns of gender inequality in gendered institutions and changes in the process of gendered agency. Reviewing the ext...
Since 2008, Ireland has experienced a profound multi-faceted crisis, stemming from the collapse of the financial and property sectors. Despite enduring six years of neoliberal austerity measures in response to this situation, popular protest has been muted. Using Silva's [(2009) Challenging Neoliberalism in Latin America (Cambridge and New York: Ca...
This article reflects on the challenges of mixing public advocacy, teaching, and research in Irish third level education. It explores the concept of academic activism and introduces concepts of 'public sociologist' and 'pracademic' to contextualize my own academic trajectory and activism. Having reflected on general academic activism in the context...
This introduction locates the chapter in a broad political economy framework. The chapter aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of how meso level social security and labour market policy work to shape the negotiation of capitalism in the contemporary workplace. We examine how institutional reconfiguration of income support, labour law, and a...
Previous Irish crises have proved to be path shaping. The paper argues many features of Irish policy responses to crisis including low taxation, user charges, privatisation, deregulation and more conditional welfare are consistent and at times intensify the liberal deregulated low tax model that characterised the pre-crisis Celtic Tiger model. It m...
Wright poses us the challenge of building a world of equality while working in the world of today. This article addresses the challenge of transitioning to a degrowth economy and eco-socialism which focuses on distribution over production and which requires a strong ethic of equality
at the heart of society. Degrowth aims to address over-consumptio...
Acknowledgments This paper is based my doctoral thesis, ‘Domestic Constraints on Globalisation: A Case study of Irish Social Security Policy 1986–2006’, School of Law and Government, Dublin City University, 2006. I would like to acknowledge,that Combat,Poverty Agency,funded,my doctoral study,from 2002–2005. My thanks ,to the various ,people ,who ,a...
The dominant perception is that Irish society has responded to the current economic crisis in a relatively muted, moderate and passive fashion. How can we explain this apparent absence of political contestation or protest in Irish civil society? Various cultural and historical explanations
can partially explain this apparent passivity; the approach...
This article reviews the role of the state in Ireland's adaptation to globalisation and reflects on the changing nature of the Irish state in the context of global and EU pressures. It examines two competing literatures about conceptions of the Irish state, one which argues Ireland is a model of successful development or flexible develpomental stat...
This chapter examines recent social policy directions in the context of the neo-liberal macro environment and examines how social policy reform can contribute towards a democratic and egalitarian Ireland. The chapter argues that a shift to positive social policy and more equitable outcomes requires a corresponding shift in power and structures of g...
Beginning by outlining the pre-recession aspirations for an active Irish social policy, the article then examines the recent political economy of social policy and the cumulative impact of the National Asset Management Agency, the Report of the Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure Programmes (McCarthy, 2009), the Commission on Ta...
The NESC report is a welcome description of serious social deficits and inequalities that persist in Ireland. An analysis of Ireland’s welfare state acknowledges that existing policies and approaches to organising social policy are not tackling social inequalities. NESC argues that Ireland is a hybrid welfare state undergoing multiple changes and p...
This article attempts to analyse some of the experiences of the Irish community and voluntary sector's participation in social partnership. The article explores the politics of social partnership and discusses the implications of participation in social partnership for the potential strategies and choices for the community and voluntary sector. It...
Reframing the Irish activation debate;
Accommodating care and safeguarding social rights and choices
Basic Income (BI) is often argued as the ideal reform from a feminist perspective. The paper reflects on whether BI can deliver a feminist gender neutral carer-worker vision of reform. This paper first considers the pros and cons of BI from a general feminist perspective. It argues that a basic income approach, with the potential to reinforce prese...
Projects
Projects (3)
Working with Dr Michelle Maher and with project partner Ann Irwin (Community Work Ireland) Commsoc is funded by an IRC New Foundations award and examining the impact of procurement on civil society from the perspective of both service delivery and advocacy. Looking at four sectors, domestic violence, homeless services/housing first, public employment services and community development. Working with focus groups, qualitative interviews and a stake holder symposium the project aims to develop a theoretical framework and methodological approach for a larger comparative study on the impact
of commissioning/procurement on civil society in small states.
Mary P Murphy currently works with post doc Dr Nuala Whelan in Maynooth University Social Science Institute where she is funded through IRC Coalesce to research researching the concept of a Public Employment System in the context of changing labour markets and with a particular focus on guidance models and well being outcome metrics for those most distant from the labour market. Three work packages a) map the employment services that comprise a public employment system b) develop a guidance model for those most distant from the labour market c) examine implementation challenges and outcome metrics for inclusive labour market outcomes.
The project seeks to:
• Use the current quantitative evidence base available and desk research to better understand how lone parents currently fare in higher education
• Use desk research and qualitative interviews with lone parent advocacy groups to identify the supports and barriers for lone parents in accessing higher education
• Use desk research and insights obtained from previous steps, to recommend and cost measures to increase participation by lone parents in higher education.
