Browsing Category

Campaigns & Issues

227 posts
Read More

Campaign Against Household & Water Taxes – what next?

The Campaign Against Household & Water Taxes (CAHWT) meets on 19 May for its first conference. This follows a period of hectic activity, public meetings, postering and protests in order to establish a campaign and the highest possible boycott level of the household tax.

Read More

Archaic ban on pregnant student

The case of a pregnant 16 year old being refused a place in a private Catholic school in Munster has caused  widespread shock and disgust. The issue came to light in a report from the Ombudsman for Children’s rights.

Read More

X Case legislation defeated – Time for a new struggle for abortion rights

Unsurprisingly, the Bill proposed by Socialist Party / United Left Alliance TD, Clare Daly to legislate for the X Case, was overwhelming defeated in the Dail. The establishment fail yet again; women suffer, and working class and economically deprived women who can’t or find it difficult to muster the money to travel to access a termination, and migrant women and women trapped in abusive relationships who have restrictions on their travel, suffer most acutely.

Read More

World warming even faster than thought

2010 is now thought to be the warmest year on record. Previously, the accelerated warming of the arctic was insufficiently taken into account by one of the main global temperature records. Now, new data paints a dramatic picture of our warming planet: due to a sharp rise in carbon dioxide output from industrial activity over the last two decades, the world is warming faster than we thought.

Read More

Abortion rights now – Socialist Party supports X Case Bill

The Bill that Socialist Party TD Clare Daly and Deputies Joan Collins and Mick Wallace have written and brought forward to the Dáil coincides with the 20th anniversary of the X Case, when a 14 year-old girl who became pregnant after being raped by a neighbour was prevented by the High Court from travelling to England for an abortion. Two weeks later, after massive public pressure and protests, the Supreme Court upheld her right to an abortion in England on the basis that her life was threatened because of the risk of suicide.

Read More

Septic Tank Charge: Don’t register, don’t pay!

A major campaign of opposition to the septic tank charge and the Household Tax has developed throughout rural Ireland with meetings of 400-500 in Donegal Town and Malin in Donegal and 500 plus in Newcastle West, County Limerick. In some cases opportunist establishment politicians are helping organise these meetings but Fianna Fail and Fine Gael are largely responsible for the failure to provide an adequate modern waste water infrastructure and they will be found out in the course of the genuine campaign which is being built.

Read More

No tolerance for racist bigotry

The issue of racism has reared its ugly head as it recently made news headlines. The conviction of Stephen Lawrence’s killers gave us a sinister reminder of the worst consequences of racism. Just as with the brutal murder of Toyosi Shittabey in 2010, we must use these incidents as a wake-up call to stamp out the possibility of such horrific tragedies happening.