A generalised assault is underway against the pay and conditions of workers in the private health sector. In the likes of the Bon Secours and the Mater Private the employers have sought to impliment paycuts in line with the governement attacks on public service pay.

Ann Orr spoke to Laura who is married to a public sector worker who prior to the recent pay cuts earned €28,000 a year. They are both in their twenties and have a son who is nearly two years old.

A RECENT case in which a judge jailed a 19 year old for having consensual sex with his girlfriend (16 and three-quarters years of age) has exposed the unjust and backward nature of laws governing young people and sexual activity.

Joe Higgins MEP supports public service workers' industrial action to reverse savage wage cuts. However more determined action than "work to rule" will be needed to force goverment reversal of pay cuts.

Although the crisis surrounding the ’sidestepped’ Northern Ireland First Minister, Peter Robinson, and his wife, Iris, has appeared to temporarily subside, the fact that the whole structure of power sharing and the power-sharing Executive might be in danger of collapse over the controversy, graphically illustrates the artificial nature of that entity.

ICTU’S SO-CALLED "plan of action" to oppose the pay cuts imposed on public sector workers is vague and doesn’t outline a clear strategy as to how the cuts can be reversed.

THE JAWDROPPING sequence of events surrounding Iris Robinson soliciting £50,000 from two millionaire property developers (the late Fred Fraser and Ken Campbell) has opened a Pandora’s Box of corruption which goes right to the heart of the political establishment.

The signing of the St Andrews Agreement in 2006 was meant to represent a framework which would enable the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein to work together as the two largest parties in the Northern Ireland Executive. Peter Hain, Northern Ireland Secretary for State at the time, declared it an “astonishing breakthrough”. This so-called agreement, though, was nothing of the sort.

The winners of the Socialist Party Christmas raffle 2009.