Joe Higgins TD

By Election 2011: Final Message from Joe Higgins TD

Elect Ruth Coppinger

This Thursday you can elect another Fine Gael or Labour Party backbench TD to add to their huge tally of 113. This would copperfasten the disastrous policies of austerity and bailouts , including more draconian cuts to Connolly Hospital.

On the other hand you could elect Councillor Ruth Coppinger. By doing so, the people of Dublin West would spark a major national debate on the Government’s policies; on how unemployment, emigration of our youth, consumer spending and business failures are all getting worse; on how austerity is killing economic potential...

Presidential Election Campaign is a farce

Election campaigns involving former political prisoners seeking high office are commonplace the world over. What makes the Irish State unique, however, is that the current Presidential campaign is a contest, not to leave political captivity behind but to embrace it, and become a voluntary political prisoner for a seven year term with the option of lobbying to continue the incarceration for a further seven years

The Constitution lays out the terms of imprisonment. Article 12.9, ‘The President shall not leave the State during his term of office save with the consent of the Government.’...

Video: Joe Higgins questions Taoiseach on Keane Report, which he describes as a banker’s charter written by bankers

I blush to think Aviva workers might be looking to us with hope that we might rescue their jobs. On a different issue, is the Taoiseach ashamed to stand in the Dáil the morning after his Minister for Finance crushed the hopes of 300,000 mortgage holders? These mortgage holders, the majority of whom are ordinary people with partners and families, are swamped by negative equity and monthly mortgage payments that devour the bulk of their incomes. The Minister merely regurgitated the Keane report, a banker’s charter written by bankers.

The Government’s attitude to the victims of ruthless...

Video: Joe Higgins asks Taoiseach why he will not write-down mortgages to their current value

The extensive leaks from the report of the Keane group on distressed mortgages will be greeted with bitter disappointment by the 95,000 homeowners in mortgage difficulties, of whom 40,000 or more are in arrears of more than six months. While there may be a few speculators among these, the vast majority are victims of the greed of developers and Irish bankers, facilitated by European bankers and speculators.

They gouged from ordinary workers who needed a home those obscene prices and the massive monthly mortgages are now creating a major crisis as workers lose their jobs and experience...

Further savage cuts to Blanchardstown hospital announced whilst €3.5 billion guaranteed to Anglo bondholders

The dedicated staff at all levels in Connolly Hospital, Blanchardstown, should be forgiven if they are in a state of some confusion and great anger this morning. As a result of a huge effort by them involving innovation, imagination, dedication and cooperation, the hospital was recently rated by the Health Services Executive as having among the highest clinical standards in the country. Furthermore it is not only reaching its service targets for 2011, but is 4% over.

This means more patients than was thought possible are being treated resulting in shorter waiting lists and less suffering...

Video: Joe Higgins questions Tanaiste on the announcement of further cuts at Blanchardstown Hospital

Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown is a vital acute facility for 333,000 people from Meath to west Dublin and Kildare to north-west Dublin. Recently the HSE demanded a costing on what it would save the hospital to go from a 24-hour accident and emergency service to a 12-hour service. The Minister for Health, Deputy Reilly, stated at the hospital on Monday there was no such plan. We accept that for now and will park it.

Today, however, there was devastating news. Staff in the hospital received a memo stating that 12 of 31 beds in the acute Laurel ward are closed with immediate effect...

newERA privatisation of semi-states will only serve to worsen crisis

Yesterday the Government announced that it is going to establish NewEra, a body to manage the State’s shareholdings in semi state companies. The Minister for Finance said that the new entity would carry out ‘corporate governance’ of companies like the ESB, Bord Gais and Coillte.

We are told that NewEra will advise on, and oversee, a restructuring of the semi states and will work with the Minister for public Service and Reform on the sale of assets.

In reality NewEra is being set up to privatise these public enterprises. That is crystal clear from the Fine Gael document dating...

U-turn on burning of bondholders exposes Government yet again

In June the Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan, was in Washington DC and held talks there with the International Monetary Fund and with the US Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, on Ireland’s financial crisis.

The Minister made headlines in the world’s financial media and got massive coverage in the Irish media when he declared that the Irish government would force unguaranteed bondholders in Anglo Irish Bank to take the hit for their gambling excesses in Irish and international property through that bank. The total amounts of these bonds came to €3.5 billion and the Minister...