This is the second part of a two-part article called Life Imitates Art. The first part can be found here. For more information on the devastating legacy of Agent Orange in Viêt Nam, visit www.lenaldis.co.uk
The metamorphic transformations inflicted on their human victims by Ovid’s capricious gods have serious or even fatal consequences. When Jove’s wife [...]

Public Meeting
The Bloom Movement invites you to a public meeting:
A Justice Response to the EU-IMF Loans: Local and Global Perspectives
Wed 26th January 2011, 7 pm
Central Hotel, Exchequer Street, Dublin 2
Chair: Nessa Ní Chasaide, Debt and Development Coalition Ireland.
Speakers:
Michael Taft (UNITE): The Irish crisis and the EU-IMF intervention
Jose Antonio Gutierrez (Latin America Solidarity Centre): Lessons from [...]

Up to 50,000 people a day die from poverty related causes with 22,000 of these fatalities being children under the age of five. The plight of the world’s most impoverished and vulnerable people have been further aggravated by the current global financial and food crises. According to the United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), [...]

The Taoiseach’s comments on the issue of the proposed children’s rights referendum, which may yet not take place at all, will come as no surprise to any person who has followed the issue since his predecessor, Bertie Ahern first agreed that the children of this state needed their rights enshrined [...]

The Immigration Residency and Protection Bill passed the Second Stage in the Dail last week.  This brings the legal basis for summary deportation without notice of anyone found to be illegally resident in Ireland, a step closer to becoming reality.
The Bill was originally intended to update and bring all immigration rules under one piece of [...]

Using evidence-based policy to build better and safer communities
Instead of throwing increasing amounts of taxpayers’ money at an ineffective prison system, we should be investing in communities by way of prevention and early intervention strategies, addressing the marginalization associated with offending behaviour, and thereby reducing crime.
This is the core message which the Irish Penal Reform [...]

Social Justice Ireland has produced a well-argued proposal for refundable tax credits - a long-standing demand to make the tax system more equitable. In essence, as SJI describes it:
‘A refundable tax credit is one where, in the event that the income of an individual is insufficient to use up all of his or her tax [...]

The Irish Penal Reform Trust, Ireland’s leading voice for penal reform, will today host an Open Public Forum, entitled Exploding Prisoner Numbers – Causes, Effects and Solutions. The event, which is chaired by the Inspector Prisons, Judge Michael Reilly, will outline the causes of rocketing prison numbers in Ireland, and identify practical solutions to the [...]

Last night the number of prisoners in custody in Mountjoy Prison reached 691, which is 151 more than the maximum safe custody limit of 540 recommended by the Inspector of Prisons in 2009. Prisoners were accommodated in the same beds in the basement of Mountjoy, sleeping head to foot. The Irish Penal Reform Trust, who [...]

I’m reposting this in light of the resignation of Kathleen McMahon as governor of the Dóchas Centre and her highly critical comments about the Irish Prison Service in her letter of resignation. In today’s Irish Times report on her resignation it mentions a chilling aspect, about how the Irish prison service is developing policy based [...]