Ireland is going through a period of unprecedented economic and cultural growth and renewal. These changes are due in part to neoliberal policies that have attracted foreign investment. The globalization of Ireland's economy has had major social consequences. Living standards are rising quickly. Emigration has reversed. Catholicism has been secularized, laws on divorce and sexuality have been liberalized. Ireland has become an urban society for the first time. But there is stark inequality and social exclusion; epidemics of depression, alcoholism, and obesity; traditional values and community...

This book provides an analysis of neo-liberal political economics implemented in Ireland and the deleterious consequences of that model in terms of polarised social inequalities, impoverished public services and fiscal vulnerability as they appear in central social policy domains - health, housing and education in particular. Tracing the argument into the domains where the institutions are sustained and reproduced, this book examines the movement of modern economics away from its original concern with the household and anthropologically universal deep human needs to care for the vulnerable -...