The turning of the year prompts us to look back and look forward. In JCFJ in 2025 we were delighted to deliver a special issue of Working Notes dedicated to marking the 10th anniversary of Pope Francis’ groundbreaking Laudato Si’ and to follow that up with an issue focusing on the ethical and policy dimensions of food. We welcomed Rev. Dr. Hannah Malcolm to deliver a stunning public theology lecture. And we had two major pieces of research – one looking at the role of faith-based communities in the north-east inner-city, specifically around the area of integration – and one looking at the continued relevance of the “Kenny Report” proposals for resolving the Irish housing crisis. We delivered inputs in church and academic settings around Europe, from Cork to Knock, from Lyon to Louvain. Working with our colleagues in TCD, we successfully launched the unique MPhil in Theology and Social Justice. And perhaps most enjoyably, we continued to play a role in the emerging community garden project at Clongowes College.
There is an old Soviet toast for New Year’s which goes something like: “Here’s to another average year – worse than the one before it, but better than the one ahead.” We might be channelling that kind of resignation as we anticipate in 2026. Towards the end of the year, we gathered as a team to consider what might be coming down the road in this new year. We are neither prophets nor the children of prophets, but we thought it would be interesting to nail our colours to the mast and come back to these predictions as 2027 approaches, to test just how well we see.
HOUSING
It does not take an expert to predict what is going to happen around housing in Ireland in the year ahead. There are currently almost 17000 people officially homeless and that number will top 20,000 by April. We anticipate a large number of evictions in the coming months as landlords adapt to new laws, which only go some of the way towards normalising the Irish rental sector with European peers.
There is a new housing plan and many different initiatives will be announced, but the fundamental refusal to make the kinds of systemic changes needed will mean that house prices continue to rise, rents will continue to rise, and even if housing completions begin to rise, they will not keep pace with the fastest rising number of all: children growing up without a home.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Overcrowding is endemic in the Irish prison system. This has been well publicised. But what alarms us is that the conversation is framed simply in terms of the need for expansion of the prison estate. There is a darkness to this – the State sometimes seems very excited to build at least one kind of housing unit – the prison. It is remarkable that so few public figures have dared to consider the deeper questions about why we are imprisoning so many people and to what end. There has been very little discussion of the negative assessments of our real, existing prison system from our European peers. Here is our number one prediction for 2026: There will be a sustained push to build a huge penal complex at Thornton Hall. (And once built, it will be filled and then we’ll need to build an ever bigger development somewhere else…)
When we consider the failure to address the housing affordability crisis and the stubborn commitment to “tough on crime” logic, we suspect the Far Right will continue to have plenty of fertile fields to sow in the year ahead. The implementation of the EU Migration pact will accelerate the repudiation of humanistic values around asylum seeking and the criminalisation of migration will become an established norm. Future generations will judge us for this. But the politicians who are currently helping to plant the seeds might see immediate benefits in terms of opinion polls.
ENVIRONMENTAL CARE
It’s not all pessimism in JCFJ’s offices. We have a sneaking suspicion that we are about to cross the peak-fossil threshold. Perhaps we already have. What we mean by this is that the rise of solar (and other renewable sources) means that the graph of fossil fuel usage globally is bound to turn southward and enter into terminal decline. What happened to coal will, in the not too distant future, happen to gas and oil as well.
The big picture is still unimaginably bleak. We have decisively burst past the 1.5°c temperature increase and it is likely impossible to keep it below 2°. It is important to not give up hope and to remember that every mitigation we do effectively make will save lives and limit the harm to other creatures. But there will likely be more heat deaths in Europe this summer, there will be a continued increase in pests and disease in the agricultural system, and congestion across Ireland will increase because motormania is again the prevailing logic. One concern we have is that Ireland has, mostly through good fortune, evaded massive flooding events and if we were betting people (we are not!), then this would be one tragic wager to make – a major urban centre will be inundated, it is just a question of when. The state’s response to the warning that Storm Éowyn offered is not encouraging.
THEOLOGY
The basis of all our Centre’s work towards social justice is theological reflection. And we anticipate that the biggest development of the coming year will be Pope Leo XIV’s first social encyclical, which will echo the concerns of his namesake’s – Pope Leo XIII – first major piece of modern Catholic Social Teaching. That document, published in 1891, was called Rerum Novarum, “of new things”. And our current Pontiff is set to address the new things of so-called AI, the algorithmic turn in our society, and how this impacts on our working lives. In an age of bullshit jobs and widespread economic anxiety, this document could catalyse the world’s largest social institution to action in a remarkable fashion.
This, remains, a perennial source of hope for us. We are concerned on many fronts that Ireland is sleepwalking into a different and more corrosive kind of politics. But there remains the possibility of the citizen, working alongside their neighbour, to raise their voice and call for something different. At Christmas time (and it is still Christmas in the Christian calendar), we are reminded that “Do not fear” is the most insistent command found throughout the Scriptures. We actually do not need to embrace the politics of fear – fear about our house values, or of the criminal or of the stranger or of what life would be like if we didn’t drive quite as much or eat so much meat. We can embrace the challenges we face with anticipation that the world is enough for all our needs and a better world is possible.
That is what we will work towards in 2026. We hope you accompany us.
