Author: Keith Adams

Prison landing with Covid-19 safety notices

The Long Lockdown

With the emergence of multiple vaccines, Ireland is in a very different position today compared with five months ago, when we entered into the highest level of lockdown just after Christmas. Yesterday, the Minister for Health announced that more than half of the adult population had received their first dose of a vaccine, with over… Read more »

The ‘Institutional Investor’ Guarantee

A decade into the most recent Irish housing affordability and homelessness crisis, few adjectives or perojatives have not be used. We want to propose a new word for describing these events: apocalyptic.

We Need a Rent Forgiveness Scheme

Following a 10-day “grace period” after the blanket eviction ban ends today, April 23rd is the date when evictions can resume in the private rental sector.

No Exodus of Landlords from Housing System

We can see that the claims that landlords are fleeing the Irish housing market is false. There is no grand exodus. And the stable numbers of landlords have less debt and more revenue than they have had in the past.

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.

How temporary is ‘Emergency Accommodation’?

In the second of our three-part series on Policy-making as Storytelling, Keith Adams continues to analyse the Quarterly Homeless Progress Reports to see who remains in emergency accommodation, and for how long? In next week’s final piece, we will look at how we can prevent homelessness.

Policy-making as storytelling

This blog post is the first of a three part series by the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice on policy-making as storytelling. Using the Quarterly Homeless Progress Reports, this series will consider the stories which are central to homeless policy in Ireland and if other stories exist. This post will focus on exits from homelessness with the second post next week reflecting on families prevented from entering homelessness. Duration of stay in emergency accommodation will be the focus of the third blog post and round off the series.

Give up yer oul ideologies

  In early 1998, Tony Blair, then UK Prime Minister, addressed the French National Assembly. In fluent French, he described the political ethos shaping New Labour and, more broadly, Third Way politics, as “an attempt to make realistic sense of the modern world. It is a world in which love of ideals is essential but… Read more »

A Shot in the Dark

It is important to ask why a request to vaccinate prisoners in the early stages of the programme is met with vehemence and opposition. The force of emotion expressed reflects something of our punitive instinct around justice and this particular instance exposes how in the end, that desire is self-destructive.

Deaths Under Sentence

Keith Adams considers, from a sociological and theological perspective, what it means for the terminally-ill to die in prison.