Ireland north and south is faced with challenges that are commonplace across Western Europe.
There is poverty and wealth inequality, regional economic imbalance and a chronic shortage of social and affordable housing. Public services and infrastructure are crumbling after years of privatisation and austerity, and struggling to meet the needs of an ageing population. The ecological crisis is deepening, with little prospect of a state-led just transition of the energy system or the economic sectors with the greatest environmental impacts. Amidst all of this, a resurgent far right has emerged to capitalise on the social grievances that have been accumulating since the 2008 financial crisis.
In the six counties, neoliberalism and austerity have been structurally imposed via Westminster, with the devolved northern statelet lacking the real economic and political agency to chart its own path.
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