A home, however modest, is one of the most fundamental needs
of every human being. Yet considerable numbers of individuals and families in
Ireland do not have access to this basic need. Almost 90,000 households were in
“housing need” in 2013 – an increase of 60,000 since 1993. Access to a home, to
buy or rent, depends almost entirely on ability to pay. Housing provided by
private landlords is expensive, insecure and often sub-standard. Many
individuals and families, unable to pay large rent increases, are being
evicted. Many families, encouraged and facilitated by banks and building
societies, unwisely took out excessive loans during the “boom”. They are now in
mortgage arrears and in danger of repossession.
In 1975, local authorities provided almost 8,800
“non-market” homes for rent, representing one-third of total housing provision.
By 2014, non-market provision represented only 515 homes. The ratio of new
house prices to average earnings for the country as a whole is now 7:1 compared
to about half that in 1994. Thirty years ago a mortgage could be obtained and a
home purchased with one modest salary; today that is a rare. In Dublin the
average house price is more than nine times average earnings. During the last
year house prices in Dublin rose by 22 per cent, apartments by almost 30 per
cent.
Since 1995, national house prices increased more than four
times faster than the CPI (216 per cent and 52 per cent respectively). Homes
are still significantly overvalued, or more accurately, overpriced. A high
proportion of disposable income is therefore tied up repaying mortgage debt for
an extended period and less disposable income.
Is this the kind of society we want? If we are serious about
providing homes for all our people, we need to first ask ourselves – and answer
– one key question. What is the main purpose of housing? Housing yet another
market commodity to be traded like cars, racehorses or stocks and shares. This
view of housing as a “commodity”, now predominant, is deeply flawed and is a
central cause of housing crises. The primary objective of housing is to provide
homes appropriate to need. Homes, like health and education, should be provided
for all as a right, irrespective of ability to pay. Housing is still out of
reach for many and the inequalities persist. It should not and need not be so.
People elsewhere might argue that they have to pay water taxes, or
charges, but in Ireland, the citizens are already paying increased rates
of central tax part of which is earmarked to accommodate the cost of
maintaining and upgrading the water supply and infrastructure. Also in
2000, Irish people were given an exemption to the article 9 requirement
of the European Commission domestic water directive which requires
European governments to charge for domestic water supply, an exemption
the current government allowed to expire at the end of 2014.
With
the establishment of the private water company Irish Water the
accompanying instillation of water meters will charge the people of
Ireland for their water a second time. Irish people have already been
burdened with the highest debt per head (per capita) in Europe (yes more
than Greece) and the second highest in the world only behind Japan.
Ireland owes 42% of all Europe’s debt but with the entire European
population estimated at 506,891,000 Ireland makes up less than 1% of the
population with only 4,630,000 people.
Poverty has doubled in Ireland since 2008. One in five children goes to
school or bed hungry every day. Some teachers have resorted to bringing
in extra packed lunches for children who show up without any. The number
of children living with deprivation of needs currently stands at 37.3%.
In a mortgage lenders report it states that there were 16,683 homes
that could be repossessed in the near future.
There is a very high percentage of working poor in Ireland as well as
unemployed, able workers. The rate of unemployment has been
misrepresented by the government. Time after time they fail to include
the number of people who have been forced to emigrate which has reached
up to 1000 people per week including 10% of the young population. The
unemployment figure including these people would stand at around 20%
which is a far cry from the current state line of approximately 9.8%.
The figures still fail to take into consideration the number of Irish
people who have been forced into internship programmers for an extra €50
per week with the threat of being cut off social welfare. This
particular system is badly managed and is rife with abuse by employers.
Some are using interns to cover maternity leave, or as free labor that
has a turn over period of 9 months; positions that could be filled by
paid workers. There are also 356,000 people in receipt of regular social
welfare.
In a historic victory for marriage equality, Ireland has become the
first country in the world to approve same-sex marriage via popular
vote. By a 62-to-38 margin, the people of Ireland voted a resounding
"yes" for equality in a national referendum on Friday. This signals what
some are calling a "social revolution" in the traditionally
conservative Catholic country. Ireland’s constitution will now be
amended to say that two people can marry "without distinction as to
their sex."
The turnout was one of the highest in the country’s history
and came after a robust civic campaign led by human rights activists,
trade unions, celebrities and employers. Ireland’s referendum reflects a
sea change in a country where homosexuality was decriminalized just two
decades ago and where 70 percent of the population still identifies as
Roman Catholic. We are joined from Belfast, Northern Ireland, by Gavin
Boyd, the policy and advocacy manager at The Rainbow Project.
An interview by 'Democracy Now' with campaigners, voters and officials in Ireland follows here.
More than half of Ireland’s net household wealth rests in
the hands of just 10% of the population, while people in less well-off sectors
of society owe more than they own.
The top 10% of the country’s richest households own 53.8% of
net wealth — defined as real and financial assets minus debt.
The top 5% of households can lay claim to almost 38% of net
wealth
While 15% of the
wealth lies in the pockets of the richest 1%.
At the opposite end of the scale, the poorest 20% of
households owe more than they own.
The Central Bank points to a higher level of wealth
inequality in Ireland than the euro-zone average. In 1987 figures showed that
the top 10% of the population then owned 42% of net household wealth as opposed
to 53% in current times. The top 1% then owned 10% of net wealth.
Dublin was reportedly shut down as demonstrators came out to
fight government efforts to tax water. Despite the government’s attempt to
repackage the measures by reducing the rates that individuals and families will
have to pay, opposition continues.
30,000 marched in Dublin. 4,000 protested in Cork while
other protests were held in cities and towns across the country including
Limerick, Waterford and Donegal. 660,000 households failed to meet a Monday
deadline to register for water billing, Irish Water confirmed.
“It’s just everyday people here today – no politicians, no
campaigners, no one else but ordinary people who want to make a stand. We need
to show the Government that we’re not going away, no matter how much they think
we’re done,” said Drogheda Kevin
McMahon.
“It’s great to see so many ordinary people willing to march
against the Government. Anyone who is being pressured into paying will see all
of us and know they’re not alone,” said Amy Quinn, from Clondalkin
Chanting of "Irish Water will be free!” and “They say
cut backs, we say fight back"
Housing tends to be seen as a human right, but here’s something to make you pause this winter: very few countries give homeless people any entitlement to emergency shelter. Scotland goes further and gives virtually every homeless person a legal right to settled accommodation via their local authority.
What difference do these legal rights make in practice, though, and
are homeless people’s experiences in Scotland actually better than
elsewhere? In particular, do rights really empower those who are
homeless in the way their advocates claim? These are some of the
questions I’ve been exploring in my research
by trying to unpack exactly what empowerment means in relation to
homeless people and by comparing two very different policy approaches in
Scotland and the Republic of Ireland.
In both countries, homelessness has been a major priority over the
past 15 years. The two governments have reformed policies and directed
substantial resources at improving homeless people’s access to settled
accommodation. Scotland focused on expanding the group legally entitled to settled housing (in comparison to England, which gives a much weaker entitlement to a more restricted group of homeless people such as pregnant women and people with children.
Ireland saw
creating a legal entitlement to any form of accommodation as legalistic
and adversarial. Instead it prioritised building strong partnerships
between statutory and voluntary agencies, agreeing common goals,
monitoring progress and improving service delivery.
Before looking at the results of these approaches, it is worth
considering what empowering homeless people is about. Traditionally, a
person’s power has been understood as their capacity to make decisions
in their own interests, particularly when these conflict with those of
others.
A homeless person and their service provider don’t necessarily have
the same interests. The service provider might be more interested in
abiding by the rules; minimising stress and workload; or prioritising
individuals they deem particularly deserving. Viewed in this way, you
empower homeless people by reducing the service provider’s capacity to
decide whether to meet their housing needs.
Some argue that
people are not always conscious of their own interests, however. Their
subjective preferences and “real interests” can diverge because their
attitudes have been influenced by society and those in power. Depending
on what someone has been encouraged to think or what those around them
believe, for example, they might feel they deserve less than is
reasonable.
On this “radical” view, which admittedly has controversial
paternalistic repercussions, empowering homeless people involves
bringing these subjective and real interests into line. This suggests it
might sometimes be insufficient to purely expand the voice and choice
of service users.
Scotland’s blunt framework of legal rights appears to empower those
experiencing homelessness in both the “traditional” and “radical”
senses. Local authority staff in Edinburgh and elsewhere have a clear
and legally enforceable obligation to respond to those experiencing
homelessness in a specific way. They have to secure settled
accommodation for them, and temporary accommodation in the meantime. Any
other objectives or priorities they might wish to pursue are crowded
out.
In Dublin, a much wider set of considerations can play a role in
service providers' decisions. They are able to balance the formal policy
aim of helping the homeless person access accommodation against whether
they are deemed “ready” or deserve it yet, whether the area in which
they would be rehoused already has too many ex-homeless people, and how
local residents would react.
Dublin service providers therefore have much more discretion than
their Edinburgh counterparts. The consequence is that those experiencing
homelessness are in a far weaker position in pursuing their need for
settled accommodation.
I also saw signs of a more subtle difference in the experiences of
homeless men in Edinburgh and Dublin when I interviewed some of them.
Homeless men in Edinburgh tended to feel a sense of entitlement to
accommodation, to feel, as one hostel resident commented, that “everyone
has a right to be housed."
They felt impatient at being “stuck” in temporary accommodation:
hostel residents were “champing at the bit, ready to go.“ And not only
did residents internalise their legal entitlements in this way,
professionals working in the sector generally saw their assertiveness as
a legitimate and positive force that was driving service standards
higher.
In Dublin, the homeless men had starkly different outlooks. Far from
seeing themselves as entitled rights-holders, they were grateful for
receiving any assistance at all. They were often positive about
temporary accommodation that was of an observably lower standard than in
Edinburgh. This tended to be accompanied by a strong sense of
culpability for being homeless and moving on from homelessness. After a
long stay in one hostel, one Dublin man explained that he felt he’d “not
been pushing it as hard as [he] should have."
This sense of responsibility translated into substantial scepticism
that people should have a legal right to housing, that instead “you
should work towards it". One hostel resident in Dublin described being
in temporary accommodation as “sort of a trial … to see who’s worthy …
who’s pulling their socks up and putting the effort in". Far from
prompting these men to fight to move on, these dynamics appeared to
weigh them down, encouraging them to accept their lot.
In conclusion, clear and blunt legal rights to housing appear to
empower homeless people. They minimise provider discretion and appear to
make service users more assertive. Some might see such a sense of
entitlement among those dependent on state support in wholly negative
terms of course. But here’s a closing thought for those who think
welfare is overstretched: by encouraging homeless people to aspire to
settled housing and providing the means for them to access it,
Scotland’s legal rights appear to make them more self-reliant than the highly discretionary Irish model.
According to data on Material Deprivation published by the
European Commission, Ireland comes in at number three on the list of most
deprived countries in the EU-15 – just after Greece and Italy. This means that
one million people, or 28 percent of the Irish population, struggle to provide
themselves with heat, shelter, food and bills. 600,000 people are living in
food poverty. Food banks are popping up everywhere.
Valerie Cummins in a small corner of Dublin's run down north
inner city works for Crosscare, a social support agency in Dublin that set up
Ireland's first community food banks. She said "Right now, demand is so high we can't
keep up. People are dropping in all the time asking for emergency parcels to
get them through the next few days. I've been working with Crosscare for 25
years and I have never seen things so bad. People are more desperate than
ever."
Rose Sinclair-Doyle and mum of two from Tallaght, south
Dublin recently started to use the new community food bank to feed her family.
"People never think it could happen to them," she said. "I've
been living under austerity for years, but it was only when my daughter moved
back home with her two kids that the money just couldn't stretch to feed us
all. I'm ashamed going in, but I need food," she said. "It's not an
easy thing to do, but after I split from my partner I was left alone with the
mortgage repayments. I don't get fuel allowance, so I have to think about heating
my house, paying for electricity... it's so hard. " Rose added: "When
I lived alone, I was able to stock up. Things were tight, but I could manage. I
would always have that point where there'd be a bill I couldn't pay, but I got
by until I was suddenly responsible for putting food on the table for four
people. Then I had to get help. It just takes one thing to push you to the
breadline, and that's where we are in Ireland right now."
Rose isn't alone. Students, the unemployed, people on low
incomes and those who racked up massive debt during the economic boom are now
starting to depend on Ireland's new community food banks to feed their
families.
Brian Leech from the Anti Austerity Alliance in Tallaght,
south Dublin told me the community food banks are drawing in Ireland's
"new poor" who cannot manage from pay-cheque to pay-cheque explained "Initially it was just people on benefits
or low income who ran out of money at the end of the month. Now that's trickled
down to middle income earners who are totally lost," he said. "The
banks threw money at people during the boom, and now people are trying to pay
it all back and feed their families. No one wants food banks, but people have
to eat and the government isn't helping hungry people." Brian Leech feels
that, in accepting help, we cannot overlook the root causes of poverty.
"People need better lives, more income equality and jobs. The food banks
are very important now, but we should all want a better future. We can't lose
sight of the issues that are forcing people to go to food banks and forcing
their very existence."
Valerie Cummins also referred to "new poor".
"A man came in here last week. He drove up in a white van, was well
dressed and well spoken," she said. "I could tell he was embarrassed,
so I brought him into the office. He said he works full time but after bills
that day he was left with €15 to feed his family for the week. He said his wife
would die of shame if she knew he went to a food bank. Even though it's against
policy, I put together an emergency parcel that will last him three days. I
might never see him again – he's part of Ireland's new invisible poor, eking it
out week to week. We shouldn't live in a world with food banks, but what can
you do when people in here are hungry?"
I’m a farmer in the northwest of Ireland, near Erris in County Mayo. For thirteen years we have been struggling against Shell to protect our land, our environment and our community here. Shell wanted to bring their pipeline of unprocessed, highly volatile and pollutant gas through the fields of our com- munities – fields our families have cared for and nurtured for generations.
It’s all bog around here – we make the fields fertile by bringing in seaweed from the sea. For us, the land is everything. We have resisted Shell and been violently oppressed. People have been beaten, abused, subjected to martial law. Almost a hundred complaints went in about the police behaviour here. Not one was an- swered. People give off about Shell, but Shell was only allowed to do what they have done. They have their own private police, security services. They were fa- cilitated by the Irish state. The government drew a line around our villages and said “The rule of law, of the Irish state, no longer applies here”. Like it was a testing ground for oppressing their own people.
The state thought they could smash us, but instead they educated us. We met people with ideas, knowledge who came to help us in our struggle. We have learned a huge amount about how the world works, about how the Irish government can treat its people, and about alternatives. We hope now that our knowledge can help other communities – enough people together can change anything. We have to remember that everything on this island – from the last blade of grass to the moonlight - belongs to the Irish people, to all of us. We have to decide together.
We have a duty to ourselves and each other to have our opinions heard, to be responsible for what happens. The government will never do it for us.
On a freezing cold day, near on a hundred thousand protestors
opposed to the introduction of water charges in Ireland surrounded the
country’s parliament bringing Dublin to a near standstill by blocking O’Connell
bridge, leading to Dublin’s main thoroughfare.
The government have already lowered the water rates, which
will cost €1.15 (£0.90) a week for a single household or €3 for a
multiple-person household. Mary Lou McDonald, told the crowd that the revised
charges were not enough to end public anger over the issue. “They thought that
by giving minor concessions that the people of this country would be bought off.
They were wrong.”
Ireland used to pay for its water from the central taxation.
The government want to introduce meters which were paid for from pension funds.
Despite already paying increased taxes for water, they're now going to have to pay
an additional water charge. Meter installation will cost a billion and 4200
staff have been hired to administer the system. The new centralised water
company was created with 10m shares, and is being primed for privatisation. The
Irish will soon have to pay a privatised company extortionate amounts of money
for water and the government will get a few billion euros to cover short term
debt caused by bankers. The conclusion is the average person is screwed yet
again.
The Anti-Austerity Alliance are calling for a campaign of
non-payment of water charges when the first bills arrive in April.
Years of austerity budgets is enough to drive people to the
streets to protest. This is about much more than water, this represents
absolute discontent towards a government and an establishment that favours
multinationals and millionaires much more than its ordinary citizens. Seeing
old people making their way to Dublin from all over the country and marching on
the coldest day of the year says it all. Capitalism and its defenders and
propagators (and that includes the despicable Irish Labour Party), have gone a
step too far in attacking the working class.
We are minded by Nestles CEO Peter
Brabck who said "Access to water shouldn't be a public right" The demonstration was timed to coincide with the
International Day of Human Rights, which marks the adoption of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. The United Nations officially recognizes
water and sanitation as a human right.
Despite the bad weather, protest organizers Right 2 Water estimate that over 150,000 people came out to protest the water charge scheme to protest a recently enacted government plan to install water meters on homes and charge residents for private water usage and to send a clear message to the Irish government: water is a human right, and the people demand the abolition of domestic water charges. Over a hundred demonstrations took place across Ireland. As part of their bailout deal made with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Irish government has attempted to enact reforms to privatize the nation's water system. Under the Water Services Act 2013, the government set up a new semi-state company, Irish Water, which is gradually taking over all water provision services from the Republic's 34 local authorities. Martin Kennedy said he was taking part in the protests because he wanted to send a message to the government. "Primarily, people are here today about water charges, but really it's about austerity. We've simply had enough," he said. Anita Stanley, who attended a demonstration in the capital with her mother, also expressed her frustration at the government's policy. "I'm a young widow, like my mum Ann, and we're here just to say we've had enough," she said. "We can't afford to give any more." Éamonn Campbell, member of the folk bnd The Dubliners, was also among the protesters. "It is not just about water charges, it is about all these taxes that have been forced by the greedy, both in Ireland and Europe, and paid for on the backs of the needy." Households are due to receive their first water bills in January 2015. In the face of growing global water crisis, fueled largely by climate change-driven drought effects, efforts to privatize water resources are springing up worldwide. Mitch Jones, Director of the Common Resources Program at Food & Water Watch, says that "A market can’t represent the common will of the people, because only those with the money to buy are allowed a voice," Jones writes. "And it can’t express the value of water because the value of a life-giving substance like water is different than its cost. Water is vital for all of us. And, access to water cannot be for sale." Residents of Detroit, Michigan—which has faced mass water shut-offs in the face of a similar water privatization effort. "Detroiters stand in solidarity with the people of Ireland against water charges and the privatization of our public water systems," wrote organizers with the group Detroit Water Brigade. "We are not strangers ourselves to the escalating attacks on the poorest members of society collectively known as 'austerity.'"
The Irish Times profiled Farrell and two other migrants workers who felt compelled to leave Ireland to maintain their quality of life. Holding a psychology degree from a university outside Dublin, Farrell accepted a research position in Chicago when a six-month job hunt at home produced no results. The Times described the grinding facts of his search. He was competing against hundreds of applicants even for low-paid service-industry positions.
“Unemployment and emigration are still high, yet the cost of living is going up and up. Housing costs are massive; for young people trying to rent it is almost impossible to find a place in Dublin. Third-level registration fees have gone up again this year, to €3,000. Mental-health services and community supports, which are supposed to help people who are struggling, have been cut back and not replaced or reinstated. There are so many people out there who feel trapped.” Farrell explained: “I had to support myself and couldn’t afford to work for nothing, which seemed to be the only option. I didn’t really want to leave Ireland, but I didn’t feel I had a choice.”
We now know that between 1925 and 1961, almost 800 children died in Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway. They were buried in an unmarked plot. No burial records were kept for individual children, and we would not have known of the mass grave but for local historian Catherine Corless’ painstaking research and her determination that the deaths be acknowledged. 80 percent of babies born at Bon Secours did not make it to their first birthday. Those who managed to survive longer were raised almost as slaves and as Ireland Taoiseach (prime minister) Enda Kenny recently recognized, were treated as “... an inferior sub-species.”
The Bon Secours “mother and baby home” was more accurately a penal workhouse—one of 10 run by religious orders in Ireland. From 1922 to 1996, they incarcerated approximately 35,000 unmarried women. Those who gave birth before entering or while there had their babies forcibly removed from them.
Conditions in these so-called homes were horrific. A report from the United Nations Committee Against Torture in February noted that “girls placed in these institutions were forced to work in slavery-like conditions and were often subject to inhuman, cruel and degrading treatment as well as to physical and sexual abuse.” The U.N. account adds that “girls were deprived of their identity, of education and often of food and essential medicines and were imposed with an obligation of silence and prohibited from having any contact with the outside world.”
Two years ago, 31-year-old dentist Savita Halappanavar died “in agony” at a Galway hospital because staff were barred from conducting the abortion that would have saved her life during a catastrophic miscarriage. Indeed, the attending midwife told Halappanavar that an abortion could not be carried out because Ireland is a “Catholic country.”
Halappanavar’s death led to international outrage, but abortion remains a criminal offense in Ireland, north and south. Under the law, doctors are still prohibited from performing abortions on women whose lives are endangered in labor or are carrying a fetus with a fatal abnormality. The same restriction applies to women who have been the victims of rape or incest. In fact, the 14-year sentence for self-abortion tends to be doubled in cases of rape.
In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights found Ireland to have violated the rights of a woman seeking a termination in Britain. It’s been estimated that from 1980 to 2012, at least 154,573 women living in Ireland traveled to England and Wales to access safe abortion services. This averages out to about 4,000 women per year. The actual number may be much higher, but stigma and discrimination impose a vow of silence. The vast majority of Irish women seeking an abortion travel alone, their pregnancy shrouded in secrecy. They receive no support or information from the government. Beyond the psychological and physical difficulty of these journeys, termination in Britain can be prohibitively expensive.
According to the Irish Family Planning Association, “women travelling from Ireland tend to have later abortions because of the need to raise significant funds, organize childcare, negotiate time off work and make travel and accommodation plans. Travelling to the UK for a surgical abortion below 14 weeks of gestation costs at least €1000 [$1,350].” This figure does not include indirect costs such as child care and loss of income. This means, of course, that the option to travel to Britain for a termination is limited to those who can afford it. Indigent women are still forced to resort to incredibly dangerous methods of self-abortion.
In
common with all other EU states, European elections will take place
in Ireland on May 23rd.
In addition, elections to a reformed local Government structure will
also take place on that date. In spite of the interest with which the
mass media is devoting to both these spectacles, it’s a close call
to decide which poll will epitomise most the lack of real and
meaningful politics under capitalism. Socialists make the claim that
national parliaments are little more than talking-shops; full of
theatrics, posturing and verbosity whose main output are
inconsequential debates on the issues of the day. All the while, the
fundamental business of capitalism goes inexorably on, irrespective
of whatever pronouncements and edicts emanate from those
self-important halls. This criticism is even truer of the European
Parliament and local councils. For the former, the inability of the
European capitalist class to agree on a trans-national system of
governance for the Union has rendered the Parliament at Brussels more
meaningless than its national counterparts. One obvious manifestation
of this in Ireland, as with many other EU countries, is the apathy
and consequent low voter turnout that the Euro-elections engender. It
is only the second division of politicians who contest these
elections; the jibe that it is usually those politicians whose
national careers are behind them and who are in search of a
comfortable retirement home still rings true. Most voters, even those
with a reasonable interest in political life, would be hard-pressed
to name even a couple of their MEP’s (apart from the few ‘colourful
characters’ who inevitably are present) and know much less about
any accomplishments of the members. Of course this can sometimes work
to the politicians’ advantage; one Irish MEP in fact has had
prolonged absence from the Parliament in Brussels/Strasbourg (due to
illness) but given the extremely low profile attached to these
positions, this has not been noticed by the electorate and so poses
no electoral risk whatsoever in his bid for re-election. Nonetheless
competition is quite fierce between the rival candidates to prevail
in the forthcoming ballot. This is accentuated this time around
because there are less seats available as a result of the need to
accommodate enlargement of the organisation to Eastern Europe whilst
maintaining the overall number of parliamentarians. There’s no
doubt that the generous remuneration on offer and relatively light
demands of the job are attractive to many career politicians.
What
is the state of play between the rival political parties? The ruling
coalition of Fine Gael and Labour are contesting on their record in
Government for the last three years. They came to power in the 2011
general election replacing the absolutely discredited, previous
administration consisting of a Fianna Fail / Green Party coalition.
Their main task in that time has been to implement the budget cuts
demanded by the troika (EU Commission, ECB and IMF) who came to
Ireland’s rescue after the financial crash of 2008. They now have a
predicament because of Ireland’s recent exit from the bailout
programme. Prior to that all cuts to social welfare, health,
education etc. could be blamed on the bungling of the previous
Government and the strict conditions attached to Ireland’s
financial aid programme. Now it is more difficult to justify the
continuing cuts and the extra taxes on home-owners and new charges on
previously free commodities such as water. That long-time ‘natural
party of Government’, Fianna Fail is hamstrung as it is still
identified by its gross incompetence in the handling of the economy
during the last doomed years of the Celtic Tiger and as they made the
initial agreement to the stringent bail-out terms in 2010, they
cannot logically oppose its consequences of austerity on the working
class.
So
who’s hoping to do well? Sinn Fein is expecting to be the major
winner in terms of tapping into the public disenchantment with the
establishment parties; in fact something similar to the ground being
staked out by UKIP in Britain although Sinn Fein occupy a different
position on the conventional political spectrum. It’s all part of
their progress from solely being the political wing of and apologists
for the IRA to being a ‘radical’, left-of-centre movement.
However even that radicalism is now being dropped for being too
intimidating to the voting public on the basis that it could hinder
the party’s electoral advance. Sinn Fein is now positioning itself
as a much more ‘respectable’ party which inevitably means their
erstwhile ‘socialistic’ policies are now being discarded and
being replaced by a more mainstream platform although some leftist
rhetoric is maintained for effect. The impact on the election outcome
of the recent arrest of Gerry Adams is difficult to gauge. On one
level it will cement his appeal to hard-line republicans and the fact
that he recently spent four days in a British police station being
questioned about ‘republican activities’ during the ‘armed
struggle’ will do him no harm. As against that there is the crime
he is associated with and its resonance with the wider public
particularly down South. Jean McConville was a woman, a widow, a
mother of ten children. Even in 1972, PIRA recognized the damage the
claiming of her execution would do to their image and hence her fate
of being secretly buried rather than the usual end of those the IRA
termed ‘informers’; beaten, shot dead and their bodies dumped
along the border. The fact that former close ‘comrades’ have
implicated him directly in her murder will make the Party nervous.
Finally regarding the remaining election contestants, there are a
clutch of minor groups and independent candidates going forward. The
minor groups tend to occupy the left end of the spectrum and broadly
indulge in Euro-sceptic rhetoric and promoting ‘grassroots
resistance’ while the independents can be impossible to
meaningfully classify though are usually inchoate populists and as
likely to be right wing as left wing.
Apart
from media coverage, the other unmistakable manifestation of the
on-going election campaign is the proliferation of posters on any
available lampposts and poles. These are remarkable for their
uniformity and all bear the imprint of some prior consultation with
an advertising agency. More than half of the poster space is taken up
by a picture of the candidate, photo-shopped onto a bland background.
A shirt and tie is the standard attire for the men, jewellery and
make-up for the women. About a third of the poster has the
candidate’s name in large letters with the word ‘Vote’
prominently displayed beside it. Interestingly the name of the Party
that the candidate is representing is quite small: with the demise of
major ideological differences between the parties and the weakening
of the party system, increasingly elections are morphing into
straightforward personality contests. Generally the posters for the
mainstream politicians don’t carry any slogan. Even when one is
present it is only distinguished by its vacuous nature; ’Power to
the People’, ‘Strengthening Your Community’, ‘Working For
You’ etc. etc. Concerning Sinn Fein, twenty or more years ago their
candidates’ pictures on their posters had the appearance of men
still in or recently released from prison (which indeed quite a
number were). Now they are more likely to be young, presentable and
female designed to obscure any association with balaclavas, car-bombs
and Armalites. The impact of money on the election process is easy to
discern from the appearance of the posters. Those of the independent
candidates and fringe parties are smaller, more likely to be
mono-chrome rather than glossy colour and much less ‘professional’
in appearance. One redeeming feature of them is that at least these
posters have some quasi-political slogan on them indicating an
attempt to promulgate a message rather than relying on personality.
In fact the overall nature of the posters can be seen as a succinct
metaphor for the state of politics now. Any real engagement by the
electorate with the process is being diminished with time which means
the parties themselves realise it is pointless devoting time and
space to programmes or manifestos. Image and spin is much more
important to success which entails the indiscriminate harvesting of
votes and is unconcerned with any understanding or agreement with
policies.
It’s
a pity that the opportunity that elections present, in terms of a
slightly higher interest by the general public in politics, is
completely wasted. The fact that people don’t engage is probably
because they realize, either consciously or subconsciously, that the
result of these elections will make no difference to their lives. If
you have a house and job, you’ll probably continue to have both
after this election. If you’re unemployed, you may or may not have
a better chance of picking up a job. If you’re a billionaire,
you’ll almost certainly remain very wealthy whoever wins on
election day. There is an unstated realism at play; at some level the
electorate know full well the pointlessness of this charade in terms
of real impact on their lives. That’s why the Socialist Party does
not engage in this type of smooth and glib electioneering. We do not
involve ourselves in the hiring of image consultants and
spin-doctors, the cynical analysis of focus group responses to
discern wherein lies the greatest electoral advantage or the
cultivation of the media to project some image. We openly state that
our aim is the replacement of the current basis of society
(Capitalism or the free market) by an alternative society
(Socialism,) and we work towards this aim. That is the real
difference we want to make.
There have now been nine austerity budgets in Ireland since 2008. Three Eurozone countries—Ireland, Greece and Spain—have seen a doubling of the number of people living in households with no income from work. Who has been hit the hardest by the economic crisis and austerity? It is low-income groups, young people, and families with children. The report concludes that austerity ‘hampers progress in reducing inequality and poverty’ and that the economic losses resulting from austerity ‘are not shared equally. Labour incomes appear to fall substantially more strongly than profits or rents, and losses suffered by workers also persist for longer’. The European Trade Union Institute that also remarks that as bad as European unemployment rates may be, the situation is in fact worse because many of the jobs that have been created are part-time.
Ireland has one of the highest rates of youth not in employment, education or training. The ‘at risk of poverty rate’ of young Irish adults between 18 and 24 years of age nearly doubled since 2008, now standing at almost 27%. The overall unemployment rate in Ireland is about 12%, but if emigration is factored in, it would be around 20%, and if discouraged and involuntary part-time workers are included, it would be above 24%. In Ireland, nearly one in five young people have experienced serious deprivation, which is twice as many as in 2007, while a stunning 51% of young people have difficulty accessing health care because it is too expensive.
Community Platform—a network of 30 Irish groups in the community and voluntary sector—asked people a simple question: ‘how is the recession, and government policy, affecting your life?’ Based on the answers, it concluded that austerity has been ‘devastating for people who are on low incomes, unemployed, marginalised or dependent on welfare’—in short, those most vulnerable and who had nothing to do with the crisis in the first place. It warns that ‘the dual attack of unemployment and relentless cuts at national and local level has pushed individuals, families and communities into poverty’ and documents ‘parents going hungry to feed their children, people unable to heat their homes and a young generation at serious risk of being lost to unemployment, drugs and crime’. Thus, ‘fundamentally, the pictures emerging here are of people who are reaching breaking point as they bear the brunt of the crisis which was not of their making’.
The problem of homelessness in Ireland is ‘out of control’ and ‘getting worse every week and no one appears to be doing anything about it’. In Dublin alone, six people become homeless every day. Just to keep pace with the problem would require opening a new hostel with 28 beds every week. It’s hard for homeless people to start renting because in Dublin, there are 2,500 people chasing 1,500 accommodation units and rents have increased by 18% since 2011 while the rent allowance payable by the Department of Social Protection has fallen by almost 30% since 2011. In theory, there is also social housing, but there is a waiting list of nearly 90,000. The government said it would build some new homes over the next two years, but that would only reduce the waiting list by 2%.
Nevertheless, the Irish Times is pursuing the campaign it called for in 2008 to ‘educate’ the public about the alleged virtues of austerity.
While the media crow about Ireland emerging from the EU bail-out, the cost is evaluated by the trade union movement.
The trade unions, Unite and Mandate, claim that 10% of people in Ireland are suffering food poverty and are demanding immediate Government aid for poverty relief organisations to help.
In a county-by-county report produced today, they say that Donegal is the worst-hit with one-in-nine people affected in the county with the lowest income levels.
Unite Regional Secretary Jimmy Kelly said: "Food poverty in Ireland today is part of a policy-made disaster - austerity, and the collapse in incomes it has brought in its wake.
Mandate general secretary John Douglas said food poverty means someone has been forced to miss a meal because they could not afford it.
“It may mean they cannot afford a meal with meat or the vegetarian equivalent every second day or afford a roast or vegetarian equivalent once a week. Those suffering food poverty may be lone-parent families, they may be the newly unemployed, they may be pensioners - and they may be people in work, struggling to survive on low wages.”
In Ireland, without social welfare, 50.7 per cent of the population would be at risk of poverty.
The number of people earning less than €11,000 a year grew in 2011. This figure is significant: it is 60 per cent of the median income, and it is used to measure the number of people who are at risk of poverty in Ireland. Ireland’s figure grew from 14.7 per cent to 16 per cent in just one year, which works out at 733,000 people according to Social Justice Ireland. This means almost three quarters of a million people are living very close to the breadline.
In 2008, Ireland’s consistent poverty rate was 4.2 per cent. In 2011, it was 6.9 per cent. The figure has risen every year since the recession began.
One quarter of people in Ireland don’t have the money to afford at least two goods and services which are generally considered the norm for other people in society, putting them into the category of deprived. The figure has almost doubled in just five years after hitting a low of just 11.8 per cent in 2007. The acknowledged definition of deprivation means that someone can’t afford basics such as being able to heat their home, buy presents for family or friends, have a warm coat or buy meat. One in five people said they didn’t have the money to replace worn-out furniture. The same amount of people were unable to afford a morning or evening out, while one in eight people were unable to afford heating at some stage in the past year.
The number of people experiencing food poverty in Ireland could fill Croke park five times over, a conference has heard.
According to the charity Healthy Food for All, almost half a million people in the country are affected by food poverty which is defined as the inability to afford or access healthy food. One in five Irish children goes to bed or school hungry because there is not enough food in the house. 13 per cent of children never have breakfast on weekdays.
Dr Miriam Owens, public health specialist at the Department of Health pointed to research which shows that socially disadvantaged household consume less balanced diets and suffer from higher rates of diet related chronic disease such as diabetes, heart disease and obesity.
Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton said that social inequalities within Irish society have created a “health timebomb”.
One-third of the Irish population – and over a quarter of those working – has less than €50 of disposable income left once essential bills are paid, according to a survey by the Irish League of Credit unions. One in five Irish mortgage holders is in arrears or has had their loan restructured. Fingal councillor Cian O’Callaghan resigned from Labour. He stepped down because the Labour Party in Government had “broken steadfast election commitments, implemented unfair and unjust policies and made choices that have benefited the rich and powerful at a huge cost to everyone else”. Cllr O’Callaghan added that the introduction of two budgets in a row that “increased income inequality by targeting people on low and middle incomes was deeply unjust”.
Discussion between Richard (Dick) Montague and Ciaran Crossey Belfast, 21 November 1987
CC I was given your name as a socialist activist in the ’40s by Vincent McDowell. What I’m trying to uncover is information about the minor socialist groupings in Ireland during the ’30s and ’50s.
RM Vincent McDowell had been interned in Belfast during WWII. He came out wiser but he was not prepared to publicly say so. He broke with the IRA but missed a chance to openly separate. Myself, I had broken with the IRA before going to prison. I’d gone on the run, got caught and convicted. I was released in ’45-’46. I imagined myself as a socialist, some vague unidentified idea.
In 1946 I was reading a lot and in town one day I attended a street meeting at Blitz Square. There were in fact two Blitz Squares, on either side of Bridge Street, at the corner with High Street. There were fantastic public meetings going on there. Well at this meeting there were a few people, the group had a banner, the Revolutionary Socialist Party. I later found out that they were a Trotskyist group. I’d a rather personal view of Trotsky as a rather ugly man with glasses who’d attacked Kronstadt. This view came from my opposition to the Communist Party and its position on Russia. I thought that socialism which did not involve individual freedom was untenable.
At this public meeting the speaker was Jim McCleen. The leader of the group was Bob Armstrong, a Scotsman who’d been wounded with the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Bob was a charismatic character, personally very nice. He took the view, consistent with Trotskyism that the revolution requires violence. This meant that they orientated towards the IRA members, and ex-members as a potential base for the armed revolution. The RSP looked for links with IRA people for when the revolutionary situation occurred from the crisis of capitalism. The task of the Party was cadre building to prepare the revolution and lead the masses in struggle.
At the meeting I asked a few questions of McCleen, I was perceptive but politically ignorant. As they did not disagree with anything I said I joined. I later found that was something they did with everyone. I became associated with them, sort of evolved into membership without being asked or being moved as a member. There was very little democracy in the movement, decisions were taken by the ‘fuhrer’, Bob Armstrong.
There was a paper, Workers’ Republic which occasionally appeared. At this time the membership was at best 8-9. I remember Bob and Elsie, Betty Graham, J McCleen, the Hanna brothers, and Johnny Casey who was a member for a while.
Vincent McDowell was associated with the RSP but he never joined. He personally distanced himself, he’d be around for a few days, then disappear for weeks. He took Betty Graham away, he later married her. This was a bombshell to this little insular group. For alleged Marxist materialists they gave off a lot of personalised flak about this, as Betty had been another comrades friend.
The scale of Britain’s reliance on churches to meet social needs is set out in a report showing more than half of Anglican parishes run services such as food banks, homework clubs and even street patrols providing blankets and food to homeless people . More than 6,500 Church of England parishes now provide special services for elderly people, schoolchildren, parents and new immigrants, a study by the Church Urban Fund shows. And eight out of 10 reported that individual parishioners give up their spare time to provide informal help to people struggling with issues such as isolation, family breakdown, drug abuse, domestic violence or spiralling debt. The figures do not include large numbers of projects run by Roman Catholic churches, Methodists and other faiths.
Paul Hackwood, chair of trustees, said: “The recession has led to unemployment and benefit cuts, which are having a really negative effect on people’s lives. It has often left to communities themselves to come together and fill the gap.”
Meanwhile in Ireland more information emerges about the slave-labour laundries of the Catholic church. Ireland’s government was directly involved in sending girls and women to work for nothing in laundries run by Catholic orders. The state gave lucrative laundry contracts to these institutions, without complying with fair wage clauses and in the absence of any compliance with social insurance obligations. The state inspected the laundries under the Factories Acts and, in doing so, oversaw and furthered a system of forced and unpaid labour, in violation of countless legal obligations. The Gardaí pursued and returned girls and women who escaped from the Magdalene institutions and "brought women to the Magdalene laundries on a more ad hoc or informal basis".
Orphans and abused, neglected or unruly children were among more than 10,000 sent to the Magdalen Laundries from 1922 to 1996. Some had committed minor crimes, others were simply homeless or poor. Women with mental or physical disabilities and some people with psychiatric illness also found themselves in the laundries. The youngest was just nine. It was the subject of a 2002 film called The Magdalene Sisters. In June 2011, the United Nations’ Committee on Torture highlighted allegations of "physical, emotional abuses and other ill-treatment" and said it was "gravely concerned" at Ireland’s failure to "protect girls and women who were involuntarily confined." They were denied contact with the outside world, including their family and friends.
Children’s charity Barnardos said in a statement that the report showed the Irish government had "turned a blind eye to the appalling conditions in which Irish citizens lived, while supporting the religious orders who enslaved them in financial and other ways...These women were treated like slaves and deserve adequate compensation for the work they did."
Justice for the Magdalenes group said it was time to establish a compensation scheme for those who suffered in this system of exploitation stretching over more than seven decades. This had to include, said the group, "the provision of pensions, lost wages, health and housing services, as well as redress, and that is open to all survivors, putting their welfare at the forefront. Magdalene survivors have waited too long for justice and this should not be now burdened with either a complicated legal process or a closed-door policy of compensation."
Nuns from the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity ran laundries at Drumcondra and Sean MacDermott Street in Dublin, the Sisters of Mercy in Galway and Dun Laoghaire, the Religious Sisters of Charity in Donnybrook, Dublin and Cork, and the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Limerick, Cork, Waterford and New Ross.
The report said that "it cannot be excluded that … a desire to protect rate-payers from the costs of repeated pregnancies outside marriage may have played a part in some referrals of women to the Magdalen Laundries."
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)