Social issues

By Diarmaid Twomey. As someone who has worked with children and young people in various capacities for some time, I have been fascinated by the focus on their mental health in recent years. More specifically, I have focused on what society deems responsible for their mental health problems, and how ...

By Emma Clancy. Members of the Irish Green Party voted overwhelmingly to enter a coalition with the two traditionally dominant centre-right parties on Friday. Coming less than a decade after the Greens were decimated for their last stint as a junior partner in government – propping up Fianna Fáil and ...

By Michael Taft. It is not the biggest issue in the Programme for Government. But sometimes small proposals can speak volumes. So what are we to make of the following commitment in the PfG? “The 3% USC surcharge applied to self-employed income is unfair and proposals will be ...

Below is an open letter to Green Party members in the Midlands, North East, West and North West on the Programme for Government, published by four of the party’s young and rural General Election 2020 candidates, Tate Donnelly, Julie O’Donoghue, Seán McCabe and Saoirse McHugh, on 20 June. As candidates ...

Below Irish Broad Left publishes the joint statement from Alliance for Choice, Abortion Rights Campaign and Abortion Support Network, issued in response to the release of British Department of Health statistics reporting the number of women that travelled from Ireland to England or Wales to access an abortion in 2019. ...

Below Irish Broad Left reprints the speech made by Dublin Central TD Neasa Hourigan to the Green Party’s online special convention on the Programme for Government held on Thursday 18 June. Just as in 2007 our party has come together for a special convention that will shape the party, the ...

By Pearce Clancy. Four months on from the General Election, talks between Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, and the Green Party are coming to a head and likely to result in a Programme for Government. Although originally expected to be finalised over the weekend, at the time of writing the final ...

By Cian McMahon. After December’s Westminster general election, which returned a majority of nationalist MPs in the North for the first time ever, it’s clear that the entire Brexit debacle has dealt a potentially fatal blow to political unionism. As DUP MLA Edwin Poots commented, reflecting on the historic and ...