Socialist Party (Ireland) Struggle, Democracy, Socialism

By Councillor Mick Barry

CUTBACKS IN the home help service are taking a heavy toll in human misery. Just before Christmas, Eamonn Timmins of Age Action Ireland went public on the story of a 94 year old woman who had been put on a three-year waiting list for home help services.

By Councillor Clare Daly

FINGAL COUNCIL’S 2009 Capital Programme could be cut by .55 million following a financial directive from the Department of the Environment that prohibits the Council from using its full reserve fund of developers’ levies. This insane advice from the government directs that “expenditure is funded from income received or due within the year” and would mean that only existing works which have contracts can go ahead.

Having cut the Council’s funding already by 7%, the government is now preventing Fingal from spending money contributed by people when they bought their houses during the development boom.

By Matt Waine

MANY PEOPLE will look to the local and European elections on 5 June to punish the Fianna Fail/Green Party government. The Socialist Party is standing in the local and European elections to offer working people a real alternative to job losses, wage cuts and the running down of our public services like health and education. Our candidates have a record that is second to none in fighting for the interests of workers and their communities.

By Peter Kattourah and Paddy Meehan

IN THE past year, unemployment has officially jumped by a massive 62%! Thousands of jobs are being lost every month. In January alone 8,000 people lost their jobs in Northern Ireland. For young people, the situation is worse. Youth unemployment is now well over 20%. The Youth Fight for Jobs campaign will be taking to the streets of Belfast on Saturday 2 May together with trade unions on the May Day march.

 This article outlines why you should join the march for jobs, reports on the Youth Fight for Jobs March at the G20 in London and gives a local update on the campaign. 

Updates for UCC, UCD, Waterford and elsewhere

Socialist Youth in Dublin spoke to Gemma Foster about being young and unemployed, her experiences signing on, searching for a job, her reaction and ideas for solving the youth unemployment crisis.

By Feargal de Buitleir, Dublin SY

THE LAST few months have seen the hopes of thousands of young people shattered as a collapsing construction industry casts its unwanted apprentices aside. Not only are the chances of finding work in Ireland very slim but without having finished their time, apprentices are unable to emigrate in the hope of finding work abroad.

By Laura Fitzgerald

THE SLASHING of the dole for under 20s to a miserable €100 a week is scandalous. How is anyone meant to survive on €100 a week? It just isn’t possible and on top of this rent allowance is also being cut. This vicious cutback sums up what this government thinks of young people and it is a warning to all workers and unemployed that all social welfare payments are now under the threat of being cut.

By Helen Redwood

“THERE’S NO way of preparing for Christmas, that bonus is actually Christmas”. This reaction from one single parent spells out what the Scrooge-like scrapping of the Christmas bonus will mean for the 1.3 million people previously eligible.

Minister Lenihan’s “justification” that prices are falling won’t compensate for a time of year when everything goes up – prices, fuel bills, pressure to buy presents, costs of travelling to relatives.

By Stephen Boyd

COMMENTING ON the aftermath of the budget, Stephen Collins political editor of The Irish Times said: “This year the silence has been eerie, mainly because the large body of PAYE workers who are being hammered by the budget have no one to directly represent their interests.”

Six hundred thousand of those PAYE workers are members of trade unions and yes, they aren’t being represented by their “leaders.” Aside from a few comments bemoaning aspects of the budget, there was an “eerie silence” from the so-called leaders of the trade union movement.