This book is a collection of experiences and perceptions by senior British officials about their role in the Northern Ireland peace process. It does not take account of the long history of British association with Ireland and Northern Ireland, which has been extensively researched and analysed already. Nor does it contextualise the peace process within the historical tensions and difficulties t...

SUMMARY Since the proposition of the social integration theory by Émile Durkheim, macro-sociological changes have been speculated to affect suicide rates. This study investigates the effect of the First World War on Irish suicide rates. We applied an interrupted time series design of 1864-1921 annual Irish suicide rates. The 1864-1913 suicide rates exhibited a slow-rising trend with a sharp dec...

In this paper we present a partial dependency parser for Irish, in which Constraint Grammar (CG) rules are used to annotate dependency relations and grammatical functions in unrestricted Irish text. Chunking is performed using a regular-expression grammar which operates on the dependency tagged sentences. As this is the first implementation of a parser for unrestricted Irish text (to our knowle...

Hundreds of independent, local, quasi-charitable microcredit societies, or $loan funds,# were lending to as many as 20% of Irish households in the mid-nineteenth century. Monitored by a central regulatory authority, funds in the system were successful in mitigating informational, moral hazard and enforcement problems, and thus operated at a surplus in a market where intermediation by the banks ...

Metapragmatic representations of ‘accent’ in Irish English over a 400-year period are examined, identifying the phonological shibboleths that have remained in place as emblems of ‘Irishness’ over the whole period. A textual structure based on direct quotation is shown to have supported a brisk trade in commodified text-artifacts (joke-books, pamphlets, a web site) that present amusing anecdotes...

Reproductive performance has an important effect on economic efficiency in dairy farms with short yearly periods of breeding. The individual factors affecting the outcome of an artificial insemination have been extensively researched in many univariate models. In this study, these factors are analysed in combination to create a comprehensive multivariate model of conception in Irish dairy cows....

The analysis of electronic versus paper documents, especially in the context of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), has often focused on affordances, issues of design and implementation and work practices. Issues of culture are often understated in such studies. Yet, like any object of material culture, the use of paper files, as well as an aversion to electronic information sharing, is...

Respiratory infections, recurrent airway obstruction (RAO) and exercise induced pulmonary haemorrhage (EIPH) are major causes of poor performance in horses. Fungi and mycotoxins are now recognised as a major cause of these conditions. The most notable fungi are Aspergillus and Fusarium. Fungal spores can originate from forage, bedding and feed and, in turn, these fungal spores can produce a ser...

Obesity has dramatically increased in Irish adolescents and young adults and is related to changes in physical activity and diet (1,2). Severe obesity is associated with a much earlier presentation of type 2 diabetes (3–6), as noted in Irish Caucasian patients (7). Most studies of early-onset type 2 diabetes have been in minority populations with higher risk of type 2 diabetes than Caucasians (...

We conducted a survey of Irish Coast Guard Search and Rescue Helicopter winchmen to establish if their pain management scope of practice was adequate for their working environment. We surveyed 17 SAR personnel. 88% of winchmen have experienced scenarios where they were unable to reduce pain scores below 6/10. In seeking solutions within current Irish Prehospital Clinical Practice Guidelines, re...