Month: March 2014

20 posts
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State must build public housing

Despite more than 289,000 vacant dwellings in Census 2011, there is the most serious housing crisis seen in this country for decades. Few of these vacant properties are being turned over to the state. Many are being deliberately held onto by developers, Nama or receivers, clearly waiting for prices to rise again and turn a profit.
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Taking a stand against fracking

Leading anti-fracking campaigner and Socialist Party member Donal O'Cofaigh has been selected by anti-fracking activists to stand as a local election candidate in Enniskillen in May. Here he outlines the importance of the election campaign and the fight for a seat to strengthen the movement to stop fracking beyond the elections.
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Open forum: Fighting the water tax & austerity

First they asked us to pay for the crisis, now they are asking us to pay for the “recovery”! Hardly a day goes by without some new announcement in the media about economic recovery. But rather than seizing the so-called recovery to ease the burden, the government are actually stepping up their austerity agenda. A sharp edge of this continuing policy is the drive to impose water charges.
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Ireland’s inequality increases

New figures released for 2013 highlight how Ireland is a country of widening inequality, with a massive divide growing between the super-rich elite and big business on the one hand and the majority of the population subjected to brutal austerity on the other.
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NUIG students smash homophobia on campus

The week of a college referendum on whether or not the Students' Union should support gay marriage has seen hundreds of NUI Galway students take a stand against anti-LGBTQ bigotry and fear-mongering. Last Wednesday, hundreds of students crowded around an anti-gay marriage stall set up on the main campus canteen, standing there for hours and showing the homophobic campaigners behind the display that they weren't welcome in the college.
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Capitalism – “Working for the few”

We are living in a world where there is massive social and economic inequality. This situation is outlined in the Oxfam briefing paper “Working for the Few” which shows that the top one percent of the population have increased their income since 2008 and seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality has increased in the last 30 years. While multinationals get away with paying a minimal tax rate we are bombarded by such unfair taxes as the property tax and the up-coming water charge.