The headline “Europe must choose between AI and climate goals, data center lobby says” ran in Politico during the week, and I was impressed by the bluntness of the option, although not surprised that this made headline news considering climate scientists and environmental advocates have been saying variations of this for a while and we… Read more »
Introduction The rural scenes on view from the Holyhead to London train provided a fitting backdrop to reading the memoir of James Rebanks, a farmer and author based in the Lake District where his family have lived and worked for over six hundred years. On a recent sail and rail journey from Dublin to Louvain,… Read more »
To mark Laudato Si’ Week and Biodiversity Week, which both took place in May, we invited members of Jesuit schools and communities to send in their nature photographs. We were delighted with the number and quality of entries from all over Ireland. It was very difficult to choose the winners but the JCFJ hivemind particularly… Read more »
It should come as no shock to anyone living in Ireland or those who have left Ireland that a recent fact-finding mission by the European Parliament’s housing committee found Ireland’s housing crisis to be one of the “most severe” and “most complicated” in Europe. Attributing our worsening crisis in part to institutional landlords, evictions, and… Read more »
‘In Christ, we are called to cooperate in the work of creation, rather than be disinterested observers of technological processes that limit our freedom and responsibility.’ -Pope Leo XIV, MAGNIFICA HUMANITAS Dr Kevin Hargaden and Fr Niall Leahy SJ take 30 minutes to discuss the main themes of Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical. Explaining themes,… Read more »
Galway has a big congestion problem. It has been going on for decades. You would think in this amount of time plenty of solutions would have been put forward to try and stem this problem and release Galway people from the misery of sitting unnecessarily in traffic for hours. This problem is bad for the… Read more »
This past weekend, I was lucky enough to attend and present at an Economy of Francesco conference, held over three days in Assisi. The conference, ‘At the Roots of Economic Ethics’, celebrated 800 years of Franciscan thought, and explored existing and potential contributions of Franciscan and Catholic theology to today’s economy. It welcomed contributors from… Read more »
This year’s paper, “For we know not what we do. Reflections on punishment, community and forgiveness,” was delivered by Prof. Dr. Pieter De Witte. A prison chaplain and visiting professor at the Chair for Detention, Meaning, and Society at KU Leuven (Belgium). He organises and teaches service-learning courses in Belgian prisons and detention centres, bringing together university… Read more »
This won’t be a long read. The JCFJ has been consistently opposed to nuclear power in Ireland and even though the government is now proposing to change the law around this technology, our position hasn’t changed. When the Taoiseach spoke in support of James O’Connor’s bill, he noted that “fossil fuels have done extremely serious… Read more »
“The Pope is weak on crime.” At first glance, one struggles to make sense of it. How can it be that this is something that the American President has said – published, indeed – in an attack on Leo XIV so broad that an ardent Free Presbyterian would wince to read it. The rant was… Read more »
In ecological experimentation, one of the ways to examine how systems work is to disturb the system, by, for example, adding, removing, or changing the behaviour of a particular species and looking at how the system responds. These experiments are used to see how resilient or vulnerable a system is. The fuel protests last week… Read more »
You may have heard talk about planning permissions being waived for homeowners to build standalone or modular units in their back gardens (often informally known as granny flats) up to 45sq.m. in order to increase the amount of available rental units in the country. These types of accommodations are not new and got its colloquial… Read more »
In the days leading up to this Good Friday, I was immersed in re-reading one of my favourite books ever. It is a genuinely undiscovered masterpiece called After Crucifixion by the American theologian, Craig Keen. It reminded me of how easily I am tempted to wrap today up in pious sentimentality. I overheard a brief… Read more »
This year’s paper, “For we know not what we do. Reflections on punishment, community and forgiveness,” will be delivered by Prof. Dr. Pieter De Witte, KU Leuven on Tuesday, 21st April. It promises to be a stimulating event as we consider the role of punishment and the place of prison in society. This is particularly… Read more »
Earlier this month, one of Ireland’s major carrot producers, Hughes Farming, went into administration.
Though this ordeal, the State has inflicted immeasurable harm and suffering on Patrick Sibanyoni. There is the immediacy and acuity of the pain from being in prison with a psychiatric illness. There is the potential for greater unnecessary disability over his life as his condition worsened without treatment.
Spoiler alert! Hot Fuzz The 2007 film Hot Fuzz is set in a town which regularly wins the tidy towns competition; there is no graffiti, living statues or underage drinkers. A secret cabal, sinister hooded tidy-town zealous residents, decides what action needs to be taken – usually involving murder – ‘for the greater good’. This… Read more »
Last week on Tuesday (Feb. 24th, 2026), JCFJ in partnership with the European Parliament Liaison Office-Ireland held an event entitled “Ireland’s Way Forward?: the New EU Affordable Housing Plan” on—what I am sure you are already able to guess—the new Affordable Housing Plan (AHP) outlined by the European Union Commission for Affordable Housing. The point… Read more »
The Economy of Francesco is a global movement of young adults seeking to transform and rethink the economy. A local hub has just been in established in Ireland.
For many people, Lent is a time to temporarily abstain from chocolate. Is this self-denial pleasing to God? Niall Leahy SJ takes a closer look at the chocolate industry before making up his mind.
Those caught in this situation are often too unwell to stand trial, condemned to spend an indeterminate time in an overcrowded prison. Prisons, which have a deleterious effect on those with stable mental health, exacerbate the rapid fraying of a person’s mind. It is not too much to draw an equivalence to torture.
In Manchán Magans’ book “99 words for rain (and only one for sun)” he effortlessly evoked the prevailing weather system in Ireland. Rain is one of Irelands defining features and it is responsible for our description as the Emerald Isle. All this to say that we are used to rain in Ireland – but not… Read more »
Colm Fahy was part of the Jesuits for Climate Justice campaign at COP 30 in Brazil. He was impressed by the ethos and commitment of the Irish delegation he met there.
The “veto culture” is often motivated by the desire to seek an easy payout. There is something fundamentally tawdry about this and we should not be ashamed to comment on it. An attitude prevails that if you can extract a little compensation bundle from the government, you would be a fool not to take it.
You have probably seen on social media either ads or people sharing “win a home” posts. They are always the same, usually telling you to like the post and follow the page for more opportunities, possibly “tag 3 friends”, and for “only €100” you could have a chance at winning a house. Awesome, right?! Well…… Read more »
Working Notes is a journal published by the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice. The journal focuses on social, economic and theological analysis of Irish society. It has been produced since 1987.
