Search results

To examine the perspective of third-level university students in the context of the value proposition of construction apprenticeships in Ireland.

The research uses a qualitative method, conducting semi-structured interviews with 20 third-level university students enrolled on a Bachelor of Science (Honours) degree program in Construction Management in Ireland.

The results highlight six themes. These include that society appears to be directly and/or indirectly steering students towards university. This is driven by what appears to be a prevailing stigma in that apprenticeships are not seen as an achievement by society. Also, apprenticeships are seen as a limited career choice, while also being one which appears to repel female entrants.

If the shortage of new skilled workers entering the construction industry continues, construction organisations will not have the necessary resources to tender for, and subsequently, complete new work.

The perception of what could have been seen as potential new apprenticeship entrants, but ultimately chose university, is worth examining further with a view to industry addressing the shortcomings identified. This therefore can provide an opportunity to stem the tide of reducing apprenticeship numbers, while also providing a viable alternative to university for those who wish to pursue alternative routes of entering the sector.

The paper uniquely focuses on the third-level university student's perspectives and what influenced their decision to pursue third-level university education over that of an apprenticeship within the built environment; an area which has yet to be investigated.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of institutional factors in agricultural structural change in the European Union (EU) using the case study of land mobility in Ireland. A range of agricultural land use options are compared in order to examine the effect of domestic and EU policy instruments on land mobility.

Using socio-economic data from the Teagasc National Farm Survey, three hypothetical farms are created using a microsimulation approach to compare incomes across farm systems and land use options. Tax and subsidy policies are applied to derive returns for the hypothetical farms under a variety of land use scenarios.

The analysis finds that in comparing four hypothetical scenarios, leasing out agricultural land on a long-term basis can prove more profitable for cattle and tillage farmers than farming the land. Only dairy farmers derive consistently higher disposable incomes from farming their land as opposed to leasing it out. Changes in CAP rules can also negatively affect farmers taking advantage of Ireland’s tax-based leasing incentives.

A gap in the literature exists in terms of how institutional factors may act to prevent either land supply or demand channels from functioning properly. This paper addresses that gap, using Ireland as a case study.

The ideal farmhouse cheese profile for 256 Irish farmhouse cheese consumers was one with a strong flavour, a hard texture, a wax packaged wheel, made with pasteurised milk, nutritional information present on the package, a white coloured cheese and a price of €3.17 per 200g. Least squares regression was used to estimate part worths for the conjoint analysis. A cluster analysis revealed there were two clusters with different ideal product profiles. Cluster one preferred cheese made with pasteurised milk, while cluster two preferred one made with unpasteurised milk. Market simulation experiments simulated market shares for nine products (six semi‐hard farmhouse cheeses, one soft farmhouse cheese and two factory cheeses), as well as the ideal product profiles for each cluster (two in total). The “ideal” product profile for each cluster was identified as having the largest market share, under both models of analysis.

Traditional sales training has concentrated primarily on the sales interview and has given salesmen a series of behavioural guidelines to use in that situation. Sometimes these have been in the form of such mnemonics as AIDA — Attention, Interest, Desire, Action; sometimes as in the rather better Rank ‘Customer and You’ films they have consisted of a series of relatively simple rules of thumb. Another approach has worked through giving the salesman some idea of the customers' motivation. Our approach to salesmen training has started at a different point — the motivation of the salesman himself. Professor David McClelland of Havard has over the past 30 years or so been researching the relationship between the level of achievement, affiliation and power motivation, on the one hand and the level of success in various occupations on the other. He found that salesmen, like entrepreneurs, they work on their own to a marked degree and have the opportunity to get quick feedback on results of their work — they either make a sale or fail to do so — are successful if they have a high level of achievement motivation. He also managed to isolate the strategies and behavioural characteristics of people with such a high level. Finally he proved that the level of achievement motivation can be developed by training.

Consumers have an important role to play in preventing food‐borne disease. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate that consumers could be segmented successfully based on their food safety knowledge and practice.

Principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) were applied to data on food safety knowledge and practice, collected by individual face‐to‐face questionnaires with domestic food preparers (n=1,020) and refrigerator swabs (n=726).

From the food safety questionnaires four factors were identified as important for inclusion in the HCA. This analysis identified three groups of consumers based on the knowledge factors; they were “Conscientious” (21 per cent), “Cavalier” (25.4 per cent) and “Careful” (53.3 per cent) food handlers. In terms of food safety knowledge, the higher risk consumers were found to be in the Cavalier food handler group. This group of food handlers also engaged in less hygienic food handling practices. This group were more likely than the other groups to be less than 45 years of age, male, living in urban environments and those with higher levels of formal education.

The identification of consumer groups with respect to food safety is important as it can inform more effective tailoring and targeting of food consumer safety education programmes to reach higher risk groups and individuals. This is the first study to not only identify the demographic characteristics of higher risk groups, but also to relate the levels of food safety knowledge/practice to levels of contamination in the fridges of such at risk groups using HCA and PCA.

This paper aims to quantify the loss (or leakage) of organic cattle to conventional value chains in Ireland and assess its economic and environmental impacts.

The paper adopts a Bio-economy Input-Output (BIO) model, a quantitative economic model representing the interdependencies between different sectors of the economy, to assess the economic and environmental impacts of organic leakage in the Irish beef sector.

The study reveals that 17% of organic cattle aged under 1 year old leave the organic value chain, leaking to the conventional market as a result of imbalances in the development of the beef value chain. The economic cost of this organic leakage is 5.66 million euros. Leakage also has environmental effects because of changes in lifecycle methane and nitrogen emissions based on longer finishing times on organic farms and chemical fertilisers applied on conventional farms. The organic leakage results in a reduction of 82 tons of methane emission and 52 additional tons of nitrogen emission, which leads to 11,484 tons of net global warming potential (GWP) for a 100-year time horizon.

Because of data availability, the research focussed on the baseline year 2015, which had national data available for disaggregation in Ireland. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to assess the economic and environmental impacts when more recent data are available and to analyse the change in the impacts over the years.

This study contributes to the discussion on organic conversion and provides valuable insights for stakeholders, especially policymakers, for the design of future organic schemes.

This is the first paper to assess organic leakage in the beef sector.