Policy Briefs

The hospitality sector was uniquely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. While some establishments pivoted to food preparation and delivery, many were forced to shut down for over 16 months. Re-opening of in-door dining in July 2021 has led to extensive challenges of staff recruitment across the sector, along with claims by employers that this is… | Read on »

There has been a growing trend in recent years towards third level students studying abroad for a semester or more as part of their degree programme. For example, in Europe, around 2 million students participated in the EU’s Erasmus+ exchange programme between 2014 and 2020. Numerous benefits have been linked to study abroad, including improved… | Read on »

EU Atlantic ports as multi-activity transport and logistic nodes can play a major role in the sustainable development of traditional and emerging maritime sectors and in the transition to a carbon-neutral economy. While the Atlantic Action Plan 2.0 envisions that the EU’s Atlantic port infrastructure and services can play a critical role in blue growth… | Read on »

The relationship between media and the environment has been studied from a wide range of perspectives within the field of mass communication for many decades. Nature documentaries are also now an increasingly used modality to communicate environmental issues in order to create awareness, change behaviours or perhaps motivate increased viewers’ demand for environmental policy action. However,… | Read on »

This study tested the stability of environmental preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) values using a discrete choice experiment (DCE) across three countries pre and post the peak of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. A DCE examining the public’s preferences for alternative environmental management plans on the high seas, in the area of the… | Read on »

Physical distancing measures (e.g., keeping two metres apart from others outside of one’s household, limiting one’s number of close contacts, avoiding social gatherings) are among the most effective strategies to reduce the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the community and healthcare settings. Emerging evidence gathered at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic suggested physical… | Read on »

People are interconnected and ill-health is rarely experienced in isolation. For example, the physical and mental strain of ‘caring for’ an ill or disabled relative has been suggested to ‘spillover’, imposing a health- and quality of life-related burden on the caregiver. In addition, the illness experience of an individual is also thought to exert a… | Read on »

Limited uptake of financial incentives, designed to confront global trends of an ageing farming population and low levels of land mobility (i.e. transfer of land from one farmer to another, or from one generation to the next), reveal resistance or at best ambivalence, amongst farmers towards altering existing farm management and ownership structures in later… | Read on »

In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced many higher education institutions (HEIs) across the world to cancel face-to-face teaching, close campus facilities, and displace staff and students to work and learn from home. Given the persistent nature of the pandemic, and the threat of further waves of the virus, many HEIs continued to deliver courses online… | Read on »

Ireland’s health care system is a unique mix of a publicly-funded health service and a fee-based private system. The distinctive and complex structure of the sector, which involves both public and private financing and delivery of services, has important implications for the allocation of resources and for sustainability. In addition, though Ireland currently has a… | Read on »