Continuity and change in monetary policy and banking in Ireland 1922-43

The primary objective of this thesis is to examine the development of monetary policy and banking in southern Ireland from the attainment of independence in 1922 (gained through the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921) to the establishment of the Central Bank of Ireland in 1943. This research serves to challenge the overwhelming concentration on the findings of a small number of major works, most notably by Ronan Fanning, Maurice Moynihan and Cormac Ó’Gráda, in the existing historiography. This thesis is based on the research hypothesis that there were two key factors impacting on the development of monetary and banking institutions in Ireland in the 1922-1943 period. First, an exogenous institutional context, primarily Anglo-Irish in focus, in which the wider macroeconomic landscape directly influenced monetary policy and banking in Ireland. Second, an individualist context in which the development of relationships between key individuals dictated development patterns and institutional structures. This research highlights that key Irish policymakers, such as Joseph Brennan, evidenced a more flexible and realistic approach to banking and monetary affairs than is currently recognised. It also develops three further issues which have been overlooked in the existing historiography. First, a germ of monetary reform existed in Ireland from as early as the mid-1920s and was consistent in promoting alternative policies in the period to 1943. Second, this research challenges the view that the creation of the Currency Commission in 1927 and the establishment of the Central Bank of Ireland in 1943 were insignificant events given the continued stagnation in Irish monetary policy in the decades after 1943. Third, this thesis identifies that wider international trends did influence Irish monetary and banking affairs in the 1922-43 period. At both an institutional and more individual level the process of monetary institution building in Ireland was directly impacted by wider international experiences.

The geographies of encounter: investigating the spatiality and construction of 'meaningful' encounters with difference through the experiences of international students at University College Cork, Ireland

The purpose of this research is to investigate how international students negotiate encounters with Irish students and construct ‘meaning’ from those encounters in the spaces of the university and city. As cities are increasingly characterised by a multiplexity of diversity, the issue of living with difference is becoming more and more pertinent. In the wake of escalating socio-spatial polarisation, inter-cultural tension, racism, and xenophobia, the geographies of encounter seek to untangle the interactions that occur in the quotidian activities and spaces of everyday life to determine whether such encounters might reduce prejudice, antipathy and indifference and establish common social bonds (Amin 2002; Valentine 2008). Thus far, the literature has investigated a number of sites of encounter; public space, the home, neighbourhoods, schools, sports clubs, public transport, cafes and libraries (Wilson 2011; Schuermans 2013; Hemming 2011; Neal and Vincent 2011; Mayblin, Valentine and Anderrson 2015; Laurier and Philo 2006; Valentine and Sadgrove 2013; Harris, Valentine and Piekut 2014; Fincher and Iveson 2008). While these spaces produce a range of outcomes, the literature remains frustrated by a lack of clarity of what constitutes a ‘meaningful’ encounter and how such encounters might be planned for. Drawing on survey and interview data with full-time international students at University College Cork, Ireland, this study contributes to understanding how encounters are shaped by the construction and reproduction of particular identities in particular spaces, imbuing spaces with uneven power frameworks that produce diverse outcomes. Rather than identifying a singular ‘meaningful’ outcome of encounter as a potential panacea to the issues of exclusion and oppression, the contention here is to recognise a range of outcomes that are created by individuals in a range of ways. To define one outcome of encounter as ‘meaningful’ is to overlook the scale of intensity of diverse interactions and the multiplicity of ways in which people learn to live with difference.