If a climate of fear dominates most public discussion of drug policy, it is often associated with, or justified, by a climate of moral disapproval – drugs are bad, therefore we must eliminate them, we cannot be seen to tolerate them in any way. The war on drugs must continue and any dissenting voices must be suppressed.  

Causing the death of a pedestrian or cyclist will continue to be treated as manslaughter but the statutory response to careless and dangerous driving resulting in serious injury is not served by meagre fines for motorists who do not even have a driving ban imposed. Lifetime driving disqualifications must be on the table of sanctions as a driver who has caused injury has visibly demonstrated an inability to safely operate a motor vehicle

We are not yet feeling the worst impacts of climate change. However, this summer’s wetter than normal weather has already played havoc with the agricultural industry, reducing growth and impacting harvesting. Imagine the impact of more widespread flooding, or the compounding impact of several years of climate induced poor yields. Our reliance on a very narrow range of environmental conditions and our failure to build up our environmental resilience is incredibly risky.

Travellers are overrepresented in homelessness emergency accommodation and also comprise part of the ‘hidden homeless’ in Ireland; people who are living in precarious or overcrowded housing. Traveller families with children are often left lingering in emergency family hubs for far longer than families from the settled community before being offered homes. When they are offered homes, these are often inadequate or ill-suited to their needs. Travellers who try to get tenancies in private rented accommodation face discrimination and have applications rejected.

Research suggests that even switching to cycling or walking one day a week can have significant consequences for our personal carbon footprint and our collective emissions. Developing tailored Irish studies that draw out the kind of emissions reductions that are achieved through school-based active transport initiatives would be an important element of the argument that could encourage local councils to commit to real evidence-based policy.

Considering how we begin to end violence in society, Allegra McLeod, from University of Chicago, urges us to “expand our understanding of violence beyond individualized disorder and the immediate scene of interpersonal harm” and unearth its political and economic roots. This can be difficult when a victim has experienced extreme violence and long-lasting harm. But the ambition of criminal justice systems should be the tempering of violence in society and not just meting out more violence in response to the initial offense. Louk Hulsman, a Dutch criminologist, warns that we create a counter-reality when we only understand an individual in the context of their offense, completely isolated from “his environment, his friends, his family, the material substratum of his world.”

It is a terrible indictment of a city’s infrastructure that I consider myself lucky to be hit by a car in the specific way I was. My incident was not recorded, and neither are many such cases (many of which have much more severe outcomes), which masks the level of danger inherent in cycling or walking through the city.  The stats that are recorded highlight the problems we have on our roads. So far this year in Ireland 22 pedestrians and one cyclist have been killed. These figures are an outrage.

The reasons for turning down one or more offers of social housing are the concern of the homeless person or family involved, and this is not why the homelessness situation is “complicated”. It is complicated because of the reticence to solve it, by automatically placing homeless people in [actual] social homes for fear of a cascade effect where there is a rush of people declaring themselves homeless. This is the anxiety expressed in the 2017 Welfare cheats… campaign – the unfounded fear that the people at the bottom of society are taking advantage of us all, when our real fear is that we might some day be those people

In conversation on this topic, it becomes clear that most Irish people view neutrality not as a refusal to participate in the struggle for justice, but as a positive commitment to participate in certain ways. That means we don’t build an army capable of joining an invasion force. But that doesn’t stop us from building an army well suited to peacekeeping duties.

Initially I travelled to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories hoping to gain a deeper understanding of my faith. In the end, witnessing the Palestinian people carry out their faith with openness and resilience brought a true insight into how God works.

Placing the State’s current programme of prison expansion alongside a historical understanding of penal reform or a more contemporary understanding of penal moderation, it becomes clear that the Irish Government has thrown in the towel on penal reform as it is commonly understood, despite its adoption of advocates’ rhetoric.

In the right circumstances biodiversity and the natural environment has an incredible capacity to restore itself. In many cases we know what we need to do…

If land that has been identified for the RZLT was instead purchased by local authorities using the CPO mechanism and used to build public housing, it would be a step in the right direction.

The shift to electric cars is an essential element of our climate mitigation strategy. But to repeat a cliché that is fundamentally true: electric cars are not a plan to save the world; they are a plan to save the car industry.

Instead of levelling the playing field, fast fashion is actually increasing inequality.

Changing the pace at which you move through a city, and removing the metal barrier which separates you from your surroundings, makes you a more engaged resident and citizen. You come to intimately know your surroundings, such as the parts of your commute that are more dangerous, where the best views are, and which areas have more green space. You spot the areas where the infrastructure is good enough to allow kids to walk and cycle to school. You also see where new homes are being built and others are boarded up. The life of an area becomes is more connected to you, than it is from when observed from behind the wheel of a car.

This issue is not only affecting the property market for potential buyers. Land hoarding and speculation also affects the delivery of social housing. Higher land values consume a significant part of the budget of AHBs – who deliver much of our social and affordable housing – and directly impact the final cost of the houses and apartments. This has an obvious immediate impact on how many units they can deliver. It is also an issue when calculating the financial outlay for affordable and cost-rental housing, which in turn affects the price of sale or rent of a unit and the overall long-term sustainability of a scheme.

The fact that we have to take everything about SMR technology on trust is important because for almost a century, the unfulfilled promise of the nuclear energy industry has left a trail of destruction in its wake. While carbon-neutral from a certain perspective, any claim that nuclear energy has been good for the environment can only be financially motivated. Apart from the obvious catastrophic impact of the Fukushima and Chernobyl disasters, in the ten years from 2006-2016, Greenpeace found 166 “near misses” at nuclear power plants in the USA alone.

Research has shown repeatedly that more prison spaces does not solve overcrowding. Today’s commitment of an additional 620 beds is based on the development of around 400 new cells which is the final nail in the coffin of any ambition for “one prisoner, one cell”. Even the conservative proposal of a cap at 4,000 prisoners is not considered by the Department. We are staring into a future of double-ups, triple-ups and rampant overcrowding.

Beyond agriculture we see this undervaluation of biodiversity every day. Developments fail to take care to protect existing habitats; trees are routinely cleared in the name of road safety, when they are deemed dangerous or to satisfy the demand for fuel. We value what we understand.

At the heart of the prison-black-hole phenomenon is a refusal to recognise the humanity of the prisoner. The person in prison ceases being a citizen, a neighbour, a person with a complex narrative that can explain how they ended up where they are. They no longer warrant our empathy. They become faceless and nameless.

Most prisoners come into prison with an addiction issue, receive little or no help with their addiction, and leave prison with the same addiction issue. And we are surprised when they reoffend!

If this example of using public land for the ‘common good’ was followed by everyone – from individuals to businesses to the State – it would significantly improve our lives, as well as help with the multiple social and environmental crisis we are living with.

A house or apartment that is owned by someone who does not live in it, is not that person’s home, but it is their property. If the property has a tenant living in it, it is now their home, even though they are not the owner.

Maybe serious channels for dialogue, listening and understanding are being developed by the Office of An Taoiseach and other departments. But if, as I suspect, the real intention is not for understanding but a focus on building consensus about the issue of societal violence, we may be asked to travel a different path. One of punishment rather than understanding.