There is a legitimate debate taking place within what might loosely be called ‘the Irish left’ at the moment. It takes place within campaigns, within trade unions, in communities, online, in homes, and anywhere that concerned citizens meet.
The need for this debate is evident to all who take part in it. There is no argument or disagreement that the housing emergency is a policy-created disaster enabling profiteering and greed to feast upon human misery and suffering. There is no argument that, while headline job figures are spun positively, the precarious nature of work and the race to the bottom in terms of pay and conditions have created real and potentially lifelong ‘in work poverty’, and the current labour market is often debilitating to workers and their expectations of a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. There is no argument that public services like health and education have not recovered from the years of austerity. There is massive personal debt. Deprivation, particularly among children, is among the highest in Europe. We tax middle and lower income earners, we have average consumption taxes, but we are a tax haven for the richest and the greediest. We have a broken media completely controlled by the neoliberal ideology and refusing to engage in an honest debate on these issues. And yes, like much else, that ideology and its followers will still try to privatise our human right to water, our recent victory being just a temporary success that must be built on if we are not to lose in the end.
Continue reading “Do we want a real alternative, or just more of the same?”