Saturday 18 April 2026 at the AMRI Justice Conference I spoke on a panel and facilitated the afternoon session with doughnut economics and some time traveling. AMRI is the Association of Leaders of Missionaries & Religious of Ireland. Their national conference was on Advancing Justice, Peace and Care for Our Common Home: Exploring opportunities for collaborative, faith-based responses towards a just and sustainable future for all.
My points were made considerably easier by the fact Seán Farrell had opened the day with an astonishing ease of spake about difficult things. Human rights and human development in a fractured planet. Truth to power across the globe and at home a breath of social justice, it was an honour to hear him speak.
I was one of three that spoke on a panel. My fellow panelist were David O’Donoghue and Kevin Hargarden, an honour to have sat with them.
These were our topics:
- Reimaging a sustainable future through the lens of Doughnut Economics: what next? Speaker: Roisin Markham, Irish Doughnut Economics Network
- Human flourishing at the centre of sustainable development: what next for Agenda 2030 Speaker: David Donoghue
- ‘What’s love got to do with it?’: Dilexi te for social and ecological transformation. Speaker: Kevin Hargarden, JCFJ
We each had 10 minutes to speak and after a really good conversation was had with questions between us and the audience.
After a baseline of economic literacy, I shared the language of regenerative economics and did a 101 on Doughnut Economics. DE gives us new language & tools to hold the complexity and rupture of our times.
Sine 2024 I’ve been calling for a transformation. I asked the people in the room to support and give their voice to a transformation that is not just technical but also cultural, moral and social. Our economy lives inside our society not the other way round.
MY ASK
1. move your money.
Faith communities in Ireland hold assets. Investments. Pension funds. Property. Every euro sitting in fossil fuel companies, in extractive industries, in systems that are blowing through the ecological ceiling — is a vote for the hole in the Doughnut. Divestment is not a gesture. It is a moral realignment of your legacy. The Church of England has done it. The Vatican’s Laudato Si’ investment framework points the way. Irish faith institutions can and must follow. Not eventually. Now.
2. change the goal. Publicly.
Ireland’s national goal is GDP growth. That is a political choice, not a law of nature. Wales changed it. New Zealand changed it.
Ireland can change it but it needs voices with moral authority to say so, loudly, in public.
Advocate for a Well-being of Future Generations Act for Ireland. Bring it to your councils, your assemblies. Write to your TDs.
Name it as a justice issue, because it is. Because our economy is a house of cards and a moral failure to our society.
3. adopt something broken and restore it.
You have land. You have communities. You have presence everywhere on this island. I am asking you to make a covenant — not a project, not a programme, a covenant — with something that is broken and needs tending. A river. A hedge. A parish of soil. A community food system. Make it intergenerational. Make it accountable. Make it real.
Because the restoration of Ireland’s rivers, soils, and biodiversity cannot happen from a government department. It happens community by community. Watershed by watershed. Parish by parish.
This is your oldest tradition. Care for the earth is not a new idea. The Doughnut simply gives it a framework and tools and an urgency.
I don’t normally have asks at the end of my session, I’ve previously thought of them as educational. But the asks really resonated and the slogan “move the money” was picked up several times in the afternoon.
Taking a strong position with some of Irelands oldest institutions in the room felt distinctly different.
With a room of people who are from the global south and/or have lived decades working on social justice in religious life the reflections from Step into the doughnut were distinctive.
After step into the doughnut workshop Lara and I ran a session we’d specifically designed Collaborative Action Labs: Call to Action – Advancing Collaboration.
For this piece we combined time travel, drawing and with doughnut rapid mapping in small groups. The conversations were noisy, a sure sign of success.
A plenary followed where good strong conversations persisted and actions discussed.
The afternoon session had quiet reflection time where everyone was invited to capture and share there one collaborative action
Many thanks to Lara Kelly the Dominican Sisters Social Justice Officer and Toni from AMRI for the invitation to be in the room.
Lara has been working with doughnut economics building resources and adapting tools for different types of physical spaces and for less mobile groups including elderly people. She hosts a Dominican Sisters Virtual Cuppa across different congregations.
Lara has written this booklet on Bringing faith communities into the Doughnut. If you are part of a religious congregation you maybe interested in reading and sharing it.
Lara has written this booklet on Bringing faith communities into the Doughnut. If you are part of a religious congregation you maybe interested in reading and sharing it.
You can read and share the pdf here.
Congregations and faith communities are some of Irelands oldest institutions. They have not always served Ireland well and have been complicit in some of the largest harms to women and children.
I want to acknowledge the support and collaboration the Dominican Sisters, Ronnie in particular and Lara have shared with me.
As Ireland moves further into this century and towards 2030 we will need everyone. How we find ways to work together is important.
Roisin Markham 
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