Up to one and a half million people use the Voluntary Health Insurance organisation in the hope of getting more immediate attention to health problems than if they were depending only on the public Health Service. It really does beggar belief that the Fianna Fail / Green Party government has agreed to privatise it at [...]
Cuts in One Parent Family payment will force thousands into poverty
On June - 1 - 2010
The details of the phasing out of the One Parent Family Payment for single parents whose youngest child reaches 13, as opposed to the previous limit of 18 (or 22 if they remained in full time education) is, despite what Minister O’Cuiv asserts, a recipe for driving thousands of families into further poverty. In order [...]
As “national bankruptcy” threatened, international solidarity is crucial
On May - 28 - 2010
In an article published on May 21 in the British current affairs and politics magazine, New Statesman, the editor of BBC2’s Newsnight programme, Paul Mason, concluded with the following sentence: “So phase three of the global crisis poses the following danger: that the fiscal stimulus of the past 18 months produces bankruptcy at the level [...]
Privatisation of VHI as discredited as that of Telecom Eireann and Team Aer Lingus
On May - 28 - 2010
The announcement yesterday by Minister Harney and the Taoiseach that VHI will be privatised over the next two years is a further installment in this government’s destruction of the very idea of a public Health Service. It is callously throwing hundreds of thousands of people, especially the old and the sick, to the mercy of [...]
The remarks by incoming IMPACT General Secretary, Shay Cody, at the union’s conference in Kilkenny today have just been relayed to me in Strasbourg. Rather than answering the fundamental questions about the failed strategy of the IMPACT and ICTU leadership to defend the pay and conditions of union members, he instead questions the right of [...]
Commissioner Rehn’s call for further austerity measures must be actively opposed.
On May - 20 - 2010
Yesterday’s reports that EU Economics Commissioner Olli Rehn may seek even further austerity measures from Member States should put working people accross Europe on their guard. Fearful that some governments will lack the fortitude to really put the boot in when faced with mass strike action and protests, the EU Commission intends using the Growth [...]
The Fine Gael Leader, Enda Kenny, claimed in the Dail yesterday that the interference of the EU Commission and Council of Ministers in the budgetary affairs of Member States was “completely contrary to the Lisbon Treaty.” Deputy Kenny boasted to his EPP colleagues in April 2009 in Warsaw, regarding the Lisbon Treaty, that he would [...]
