This is the first speech in the new Irish Parliament of Joe Higgins - he is the Socialist Party TD (MP) for West Dublin. (I have slightly edited it for relevance here. For more info, Joe's website is here).
I oppose the nomination of Deputy Enda Kenny as Taoiseach [Prime Minister] of a Fine Gael-Labour Party coalition Government. ... the programme presented by Deputy Kenny ... proposes, almost to the letter, to continue the reactionary programme of the old order - of the late and unlamented regime of Fianna Fáil and the Green Party, a regime that was rightly reviled, rejected and sent to oblivion by the Irish people for its economic and political crimes. Given the day that it is [Ash Wednesday], I am surprised that the remnants of that Government did not return with their brows heavily stained with penitential ash to recognise the role it played.
The outgoing regime indulged the profiteering speculators and grasping bankers, imprisoning a generation of young working people in monstrous mortgages and negative equity. When that greedfest inevitably choked on its own excess, it treacherously connived with the EU, IMF and ECB to save the skins of the major European banks that had their snouts deep in the feeding trough that was the Irish property market where they slurped as frenetically as any Fianna Fáil developer or big Irish banker.
For this, and the crash that inevitably resulted, we see the savage attacks on the living standards of our people, which this nominee for Government intends to continue. They attack public services and steal from the disabled and the poor. ...
However, this nominee for Taoiseach proposes to confirm and reinstate the discredited programme of a discredited Government. The poisonous cocktail of austerity, concocted by the witch doctors in Brussels and Frankfurt because of the sickness of the European financial system, is to continue to be force-fed to the Irish people by this new proposed Government.
Therefore, a vote for Deputy Kenny for Taoiseach is a vote ... more of the same. It is a vote for monstrous cuts in the living standards of workers and the unemployed, ... for wholesale privatisation of public assets, notwithstanding the disastrous consequences of previous privatisations such as Team Aer Lingus and Telecom Éireann, for blatant new tax burdens on ordinary people, including a water tax and home tax a ...
It was a great Irish socialist, James Connolly, who, in opposition to that conflict [First World War], called for a torch to be lit in Ireland that would, “not burn out until the last throne and the last capitalist bond and debenture” was burned. How deeply ashamed James Connolly would be today that the Labour Party he founded marches into Dáil Éireann [Irish Parliament] to become part of a Government that will burn not the bondholders, the speculators or the grasping big bankers but the Irish people, the working class, the unemployed, the poor and the low and middle-income workers.
The Socialist Party and the United Left Alliance rejects the right wing programme proposed by Deputy Kenny. We reject the rule of the financial markets, which is causing such crisis and suffering among our people. We demand instead that they be brought to heel and brought into public ownership and democratic control in Ireland and Europe to be used instead as vehicles of major public investment to create projects that would quickly see tens of thousands of people returning to work from the tragedy of standing in the dole queue.
The incoming Government will have a crushing majority in this Dáil. It should not think from this that its economic programme of savage austerity will go unchallenged. It certainly will be challenged in this Chamber and it should be remembered that we in the united left will facilitate the mobilisation of worker power, people power and community power to defend the living standards of the vast majority of people, who are attacked by this programme, to defend their livelihood and to oppose new and unjust stealth taxes.
As Members meet today, they also should remember the magnificent movement of opposition and the sacrifices of ordinary people throughout the Arab world against their horrific dictatorships. Irish working people will wish to support them and Members will return to further discussions in this regard in the days ahead.
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