Category: Poverty & Inequality News

Ireland Faces Homelessness Tsunami

Social theologian and Director of the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice Kevin Hargaden told Ruadhán Jones of The Irish Catholic that the “homelessness catastrophe, which has plateaued largely because of the eviction ban,will now almost certainly jump – unless there’s a mass intervention on rent arrears”.

Beacon controversy reveals Irish solidarity

In the middle of the largest public health crisis in living memory, it is a curious situation to find a Minister for Health closing a vaccination centre. But there was little if any protest when Stephen Donnelly suspended operations at the Beacon Hospital in south Dublin last week.

Emergency Accommodation: A Very Neoliberal Solution

This blog post is the final of a three part series on policy-making as storytelling. In this week’s piece, Keith Adams considers how to make further sense of the stories around homelessness by looking at the sources of the housing which families enter into as they exit homelessness and how we can end homelessness.

Free Human Rights Defender Stan Swamy SJ

Stan Swamy SJ is an 83-year-old Jesuit and human rights defender in India who has been arrested on false charges of involvement with extremist groups. We demand his release.

Receiving a Wooden Bowl

Imagine if death was somehow suspended, causing people who are close to their demise or severely injured to exist, in a catatonic state? Portuguese author, Jose Saramago posits this scenario in his novel Death with Interruptions. He considers it as a thought experiment, teasing out its potential political, economic, and social ramifications, often with surprising… Read more »

The Political Reality of Dignity

  The age in which we live is, apparently, one of seismic political shifts. For some, a dangerous popularism is resurgent around the world. Others optimistically spy the end of neoliberal hegemony and the beginning of a new left renaissance. Regardless of where one falls on these questions, two recent books – Chris Arnade’s Dignity… Read more »

The Covid-19 Poverty Tsunami

Micheal J. Kelly SJ is an Irish Jesuit missionary who has spent his life in Zambia, who is respected globally as a speaker and campaigner who works to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa and beyond. In this piece, he applies his years of learning and experience to predict the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the… Read more »

Margaret Thatcher blowing her nose

The weakened immunity of an individualistic society

  Our current market-focused political culture came to power after the oil crises of the 1970s. In normal circumstances, it would be highly unlikely that any electorate would vote for a system that systematically weakened social welfare, deregulated markets, and reorganised resources so that rich people were more likely to get richer. But the architects… Read more »

Climate Justice is Social Justice

It isn’t that this election has failed to become one about the climate emergency. In many ways, it is worse than that. It is one where our main political parties have failed to understand how to address the growth in social injustice and the interconnectivity of the issues creating the climate and biodiversity crisis.