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 people in the state -14 out of every 100- were living in poverty. 

This figure includes almost 200,000 children and 116,000 people in employment.

Figures are not yet available for 2009.

As local and central government fail to meet social housing need, masses of houses lie empty across Ireland. By Eoin Ó Broin.

The National Institute for Spatial and Regional Analysis (NISRA) estimates that from 2006 to 2009 the supply of houses in Ireland outpaced projected housing need by 154%. It estimates that 302,625 homes like vacant across the state, not including almost 50,000 holiday homes.

A government leasing scheme that promised to provide up to 4,000 social housing units in 2009 has yet to provide a single home. Meanwhile, the number of people in need of social housing spirals upward. By Eoin Ó Broin

The government this week announced plans to lease properties from the private sector to house families on Local Authority waiting lists. The announcement comes following a Cabinet discussion on the housing needs of low income families that took place on Wednesday, 13 January.

The French trade justice expert Susan George was hosted in Dublin last November by The Campaign Against The EU Constitution, a coalition of left wing groups and individuals established to oppose the original EU Constitution. Ms Goerge spoke to Village about her experience in the French campaign to oppose the Constitution in 2005, and her views on both the defeated Constitution and the new Reform Treaty which will be put before the Irish electorate in 2008. By Eoin O'Broin

Roy Foster's latest book, 'Luck and the Irish', is strong on economics but lacking in its grasp of contemporary politics and insight into Ireland's recent cultural changes
By Eoin Ó Broin

The standoff between the Kurds, Turkey and Iraq has brought Turkish military intervention into northern Iraq closer. But Kurdish claims for autonomy are reasonable. By Eoin Ó Broin

Norway and Italy's governments have shown that there is a place for a left alliance in European governments. Ireland's left could learn from them.
By Eoin Ó Broin

Eoin Ó'Broin talks to film director Michael Winterbottom about his cinema, politics and desire to tell good stories 

Roisin McAliskey was arrested in 1996 in relation to a bombing in Germany, but the Crown Prosectuion Service in Britain decided not to proceed with Germany's extradition request as it would be ‘unjust and oppressive'. Last year Germany reissued the request. By Eoin O'Broin