With historic working class centenaries occurring in recent years we have heard a lot about Unfinished Business. This message was strong in 2013 in reference to the 1913 Lockout and the inequality that still prevails in Ireland. Cries of Unfinished Business are once again being proclaimed in this centenary year of the 1916 Rising and it is true, we do have unfinished business.

We still have bosses and businessmen who could give William Martin Murphy a run for his money. The Republic that the rebels envisioned and enshrined in the proclamation has not been achieved and despite the rhetoric of the YES campaign we do not “cherish the children of the nation equally”, and we have a long way to go to get there, with particular work needed on Ireland’s hatred of women.

Huge numbers of people are now effectively homeless as they are unable to find somewhere stable to rent. Fortunately only a minority have been forced onto the streets so far, Dublin's hotels are full of families on 3 day rotation emergency accommodation. In some hotels such families are not allowed to use the front entrance. Thousands of others are forced to move into already overcrowded accommodation, perhaps with parents or friends. Yet more are coach surfing, moving around as they exhaust the charity of friends. And a growing number are sleeping on the streets or in tents, van and cars in park and industrial estates.

French authorities have decided to bulldoze the homes of up to 3,500 refugees living in a section of the Calais camp. A court in Lille made the ruling today, one which Refugee Solidarity activists plan on ‘appealing immediately’.

Our solidarity to Cadburys workers who today begin an indefinite strike at the Coolock plant against the outsourcing of jobs.  The company is trying to destroy 17 properly paid and pensionable jobs to replace them with minimum wage ones.