There are queues at the car washes. There's a logic to letting businesses use water but the upshot is the restrictions don't bite if you can pay someone else to do it
Ciarán Casey
@ciaranmcasey.bsky.social
Economic historian at UL. Author of 'The Irish Department of Finance, 1959-1999' and 'Policy Failures and the Irish Economic Crisis'.
Tonight, a new investigation reveals how much water each individual data centre campus has used in the past two years. But our findings also show how pharma plants have used more than double that of data centres. Story w/ @davidmacredmond.bsky.social Read just after midnight on thejournal.ie 🔜
The Commission on Emigration (1954) bemoaning the lot of young Irish adults.
From the Commission on Emigration (1954). It should be the county motto tbh
And data centres, obviously? Even by Irish standards, a gung-ho data centre policy while refusing to invest properly in water infrastructure is bananas
So much of the dicussion on mid-century Irish health metrics focuses on policy debates and the church. Any comparative analysis suggests it was almost all about medicine
For years the mortality rate in the Irish mental hospitals was way above those in the Gulag. Mullingar was over 12% in 1947. Essentially nobody was dying in the prisons and there was huge variation across institutions. I've found no compelling explanation or investigation on it
In the late 1940s the Department of Health was proudly giving out free DDT as a health measure
The first appearance of this font which I feel they used for the next fifty years
One of the weirdest findings on this material wellbeing project is the all-cause death rates in the UK fell sharply during WW2 but not in Ireland. The best explanation I've seen is food price controls but if anyone has a competing explanation please shout
Deep in a statistical abstract from 1948. I'm actually amazed only 1% of @rte.ie broadcasting time was religious services
An impressive breakout from Dundrum mental aylum in 1926
Good news from England where authorities have finally seen sense and ended the pointless culling of badgers. In Ireland on it goes, killing thousands of badgers and costing taxpayers a ball breaking €157 million thus year alone. www.bbc.com/news/article...
Badger cull ends in England as licence will not be renewed, Defra says
Defra confirms permission to use an active culling licence will not be given, ending the practice.
bbc.com
I'm writing a book on material wellbeing since independence and quite chuffed with these two epigraphs from Cumann na nGaedheal for the opening chapter
Spot on by John Fitzgerald. There's a lot of political cowardice around pretending that the protestors were representative or particularly vulnerable www.irishtimes.com/business/eco...
John FitzGerald: Ireland faces a possible winter recession yet has plundered its war chest
Government fuel package effectively takes from the poor to give to the richer as Strait of Hormuz blockade threatens even higher fuel prices
irishtimes.com
Still haven't seen a census form that was read properly before they filled it out
We're like that cartoon of the dinosaurs watching the meteor coming www.irishtimes.com/world/2026/0...
Scientists sound alarm as Atlantic current system much more likely to collapse than thought
Collapse would have catastrophic consequences for Europe, Africa and the Americas
irishtimes.com
I'm rereading a book by a Nobel-winning economist after 20 years. I was impressed the first time, whereas this time round I can't get over how he says absolutely nothing in as many words as possible With many 'classics' of fact and fiction most of their readers would struggle to summarise the point
We’re delighted to announce the society's 2026 Distinguished Lecture will be delivered by Prof Tyler Anbinder of George Washington University. "The Surprising Socio-Economic Mobility of New York’s Great Famine Refugees" Online, 4pm GMT (11am EST), Thurs. 5 Mar. 2026. Register here: www.eshsi.org
Whoever picks the Valentine's movies for TV is really going left field. So far it's been romantic classics including The Matrix, Saving Private Ryan, Rocky V and The Killing Fields
I'm writing a book on wellbeing in Ireland. What's striking about the GDP debate is policymakers here rarely treated it as the core metric, which was clearly employment. Similarly Simon Kuznets argued it was a rubbish measure of wellbeing right from its inception www.irishtimes.com/opinion/edit...
The Irish Times view on measuring national welfare: GDP only tells part of the story
All too often factors such as sustainability, human well-being and equity remain secondary considerations
irishtimes.com
It's baffling that people still happily broadcast how many voluntary flights they're taking
The Irish Times@irishtimes.com · 6mo agoThe Irish Times view on Storm Chandra: underlining failure to prepare for the `new normal’
I've always found this a really poor solution for a whole range of students
The Irish Times@irishtimes.com · 6mo ago
