Policy Briefs

There are ambitious plans for an extensive network of off-road walking and cycling routes, known as Greenways, across the island of Ireland. Research has shown that Greenways can bring wide-ranging benefits to rural communities, providing peaceful routes for school-children, recreationalists and tourists alike. Successful Greenways have opened in Mayo, Waterford and elsewhere, generally using State-owned… | Read on »

Sea anglers are one of the main marine recreation user groups in Ireland. Within Ireland, an estimated 127,000 people go sea angling every year along Ireland’s 5,600 kilometres of coastline (Inland Fisheries Ireland, 2015). However, as an activity, sea angling is often over-looked in debates related to the sustainability of commercial fisheries, tourism and impacts… | Read on »

Engaging in multiple types of innovation with different time horizons and risk levels has been found to be important for organisational performance. However, organisations face particular challenges when they engage in more than one type of innovation such as radical, incremental, customer-oriented, and technological innovation. Typically, innovations with a greater likelihood of short-term success command… | Read on »

Relatively little is known about how mid-life rural women perceive their own ageing. A recent Irish study (Herbert, 2017) shows this cohort to be highly diverse in attitude and behaviour, challenging some stereotypical gendered assumptions about mid-life women. Qualitative data were gathered by interviewing 25 women aged 45-65 years of age from diverse socio-economic, demographic,… | Read on »

Wild capture fisheries landed 93.4m tonnes globally in 2014, a figure that has remained stable over 25 years. During the same time, global per capita demand for seafood has risen from 14 to 20 kg per person. To meet demand, aquaculture – which now provides more than half of all seafood destined for human consumption… | Read on »

During the Irish economic boom years or the so-called Celtic Tiger period, Ireland experienced an unprecedented rise in commuting distances within extended local labour market areas. These new commuting patterns, driven by a dispersed settlement structure and an uncontrolled property bubble that had developed over the previous five years, resulted in an increasingly uneven spatial… | Read on »

Due to its location, the Republic of Ireland experiences comparatively high wind regimes. Energy policies in the EU have encouraged the statistical trading of energy; specifically Directive 2009/28/EC, which allows for the importation of renewable energy to count towards renewable energy targets. In January 2013 a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between the UK… | Read on »

Universities’ missions and scope have evolved from teaching and research to engaging what is described as third mission, or entrepreneurship activities. These entrepreneurship activities can range from incubation facilities to accelerator programmes designed to support nascent entrepreneurs. Through their multiple missions, entrepreneurial university contribute to economic and societal developments. Universities are now being seen as… | Read on »

It is clear from research on school choice that the decision about where a student attends school is far from straightforward. Indeed, the body of work suggests that school choice is a double-edged sword, simultaneously improving educational access and outcomes for some, while undermining the quality of the educational experience for others. Much of the… | Read on »

Due to the novelty of social media technologies, and our experiences using them, research is only beginning to unveil how the hours dedicated to online interactions are impacting human behaviour. Enterprise social media (ESM) platforms such as Jive, Chatter, and Yammer are akin to the public Facebook but are employed for internal communication and social… | Read on »