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Angela Merkel and the major EU governments are taking an interest in making sure Irish working class people pay up for the economic crisis. They are going to check Brian Lenihan’s budgets from now on, just to make sure they contain enough cuts. And to pacify their “European partners”, Brian Cowen has ordered his Ministers to come up with €3 billion in cuts by the end of the month.

Across Europe, working people are being hammered with hundreds of billions of euros of cutbacks. The result is a slashing of living standards, deteriorating public services, lower wages and over 23 million unemployed in the eurozone. To help build a unified fight back across Europe the Socialist Party together with other left groups in Ireland have endorsed the European Wide week of action initiated by Joe Higgins MEP and 15 other left wing MEPs. Here we post the text of the joint leaflet.

A report published by non-governmental foundation, Front Line, examining human rights in respect of the Corrib Gas dispute, raises serious issues regarding the policing of the project and in relation to the project itself. Front Line is an international foundation established in Ireland in 2001, concerned with the rights of those who can be considered human rights defenders. The report finds that according to the United Nations definition, those involved in peaceful dispute against Shell may be categorised as human rights defenders.

It is with deep sorrow that we announce that Peter Hadden died at his home in Belfast yesterday (May 5th) after a courageous battle against cancer. Peter played an enormous role in the workers' movement in Ireland and internationally, and will be remembered with great fondness and admiration by the thousands of workers he struggled alongside.

The Green Party’s proposed Animal Health and Welfare Bill has been in the spotlight, specifically the proposal to ban stag hunting, which John Gormley says will be enacted in the near future.

On Saturday 10 April in an angry but peaceful protest up to 3,000 people marched from Parnell Square in Dublin to the Dail to express their disgust at the killing of 15 year old Toyosi Shitta-bey from Tyrelstown in Blanchardstown  on Good Friday.

The killing of Toyosi Shitta-bey in Tyrellstown in West Dublin on Good Friday is a huge tragedy for his family, friends and the whole community and has outraged many throughout the country. That such a young life, with immense talent, could be so brutally ended has left many in shock.

It is vital that working class people from all backgrounds unite and send out a very strong message that such senseless and violent attacks have no place in our community and will not be tolerated. The whole community must also ensure that the investigation into Toyosi’s death is vigorous and pursued to the very end.

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.

The recent announcement by Willie O’Dea that there was no public money available for the regeneration of the most disadvantaged areas of Limerick city was quickly knocked off the national and local front pages by the dramatic fall from grace of Limerick’s most senior TD.