An interview with John Gibbons, formerly of the Irish Times
John Gibbons has covered the issue of climate change for the Irish Times for the past two years. Several weeks ago his weekly column abruptly came to an end. In his final piece Gibbons took the mainstream media to task over their climate coverage:
“Ireland’s most senior [...]

[Migrant Rights Centre Ireland writes:]
Today the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland (MRCI) is launching a pamphlet that critiques Ireland’s political leadership on migration, and its commitment to equality in the current recession.
The political pamphlet, Hidden Messages: Overt Agendas, was written by Niall Crowley, equality expert and former CEO of the Equality Authority. It compares the [...]

To a large extent, the reality of global inequality is ignored or at best downplayed. However, this has not always been the case. Indeed, in the early 1950s, the first UN resolutions on development focused on inequality rather than poverty. Unfortunately, this decline of interest in inequality is not an indication of any improvement in [...]

[An open letter to the Government: Signatories are listed below]
THE GOVERNMENT’S economic strategy is failing. The Irish recession has been deeper and longer than almost any other in the industrialised world.
Consumer spending has collapsed while at the same time unemployment and emigration have soared. Crucially, investment has plummeted off the chart. Not only have Government [...]

“You need to find a way to sell your ideas to people. Make them want to buy into them.”
That was the advice given to me in a little Belfast coffee-shop months ago by a lady whose area of expertise is working with troubled youth. Promoting social justice issues for her is akin to selling brand [...]

…it’s no life at all. We just live by the day… We are grateful for the food, for the accommodation, most for our children going to school… but people are wasting in the name of the asylum process…” (Anonymous Resident Mosney camp, Seaview documentary)
Enveloped in a global recession and the consequences of the disastrous economic [...]

Global Auction of Public Assets: Public sector alternatives to the infrastructure market and Public Private Partnerships by Dexter Whitfield. Spokesman Books 380 pp

Dexter Whitfield’s book is a resource that can help a myriad of groups, organisations and even states if they so wish, to understand the impact, dynamics and inequalities of the privatisation of public [...]

The Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT) welcomes the Cabinet decision to increase the use of Community Service Orders. This follows recommendations made by the Probation Service to greatly extend the number of community service places; it also answers consistent calls from IPRT for a greater use of community sanctions in dealing with less serious offences.
Against [...]

4,132 IN PRISON CUSTODY IN IRELAND
The number of prisoners in custody in Irish prisons was 4,132 on Monday 1st Feb, 2010. This is an increase of 11% on the numbers of custody the same week in 2009. (These figures do not include those out on temporary release.) This acceleration in prison population growth, in an [...]

Poverty is set to increase in 2010 according to Social Justice Ireland (SJI). The anti-poverty group has this week published a detailed briefing paper saying that the numbers of children and ‘working-poor’ living in poverty will rise as a direct consequence of Budget 2010.
Figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show that in 2008, 615,000 [...]