MEP and Dublin West candidate for the general election Joe Higgins commented:
"This weekend the annual conference of the Socialist Party takes place against the political and economic backdrop that points towards years of savage cutbacks, high unemployment and mass emigration of our youth unless a serious political challenge to the establishment consensus is built allied to a fightback in the form of mass protests and strike action.
The general election in Ireland was historic but not for the reasons being stressed by the would-be new government partners of Fine Gael and Labour. It is that true both parties achieved unprecedented successes at the polls but these are pyrrhic and temporary victories.
Can an institution, like a human person, suffer from schizophrenia? Judging by the latest report from the International Monetary Fund it would certainly seem so. The condition involves a ‘breakdown of thought processes’, a ‘deficit of typical emotional responses’ and ‘disorganised thinking and speech.’ All these conditions are evident in the prescriptions by the IMF for the Irish people.
Over the course decades thousands of young children were to suffer horrific sexual abuse at the hands of members of the Catholic clergy around the world while their superiors sought to systematically cover up these crimes.