By Emma Clancy. Members of the Irish Green Party voted overwhelmingly to enter a coalition with the two traditionally dominant centre-right parties on Friday. Coming less than a decade after the Greens were decimated for their last stint as a junior partner in government – propping up Fianna Fáil and […]
Programme for Government rewards wealthiest with yet another tax cut
By Michael Taft. It is not the biggest issue in the Programme for Government. But sometimes small proposals can speak volumes. So what are we to make of the following commitment in the PfG? “The 3% USC [Universal Social Charge] surcharge applied to self-employed income is unfair and proposals will be […]
This is not a Green New Deal – it is greener business as usual
Below is an open letter to Green Party members in the Midlands, North East, West and North West on the Programme for Government, published by four of the party’s young and rural General Election 2020 candidates, Tate Donnelly, Julie O’Donoghue, Seán McCabe and Saoirse McHugh, on 20 June. As candidates […]
26 women a week forced to travel from Ireland to Britain for abortion care last year
Below Irish Broad Left publishes the joint statement from Alliance for Choice, Abortion Rights Campaign and Abortion Support Network, issued in response to the release of British Department of Health statistics reporting the number of women that travelled from Ireland to England or Wales to access an abortion in 2019. […]
Neasa Hourigan warns Greens of ‘most fiscally conservative’ government in a generation
We have a moral and legal obligation to pass the Occupied Territories Bill
Occupied Territories Bill: It’s time for Ireland to ban trade with Israel’s illegal settlements
By Kevin Squires. As the new Israeli government moves to illegally annex yet more Palestinian land, anyone who has been following the fate of the Occupied Territories Bill will have seen it emerge as one of the principal sticking points in the ongoing Irish government formation negotiations. If made law, […]
Coronavirus will not destroy neoliberalism – only we can do that
By Lisbeth Latham. Triumphalist comments about the end of capitalism or neoliberalism abounded in the aftermath of the global financial crisis in 2008, just as there are many people today who believe that the current crisis is the end of neoliberalism or capitalism. Unfortunately, neoliberalism and – more importantly – […]
Behind the spin on the EU’s recovery plan
By Emma Clancy. Addressing members of the European Parliament on 27 May, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed the creation of a ‘Next Generation’ European Union recovery fund worth €750 billion, to be raised by the Commission – a temporary Eurobond. The funds would be disbursed as €500bn in […]
Uniting the Left to fight for an ecosocialist united Ireland
By Cian McMahon. After December’s Westminster general election, which returned a majority of nationalist MPs in the North for the first time ever, it’s clear that the entire Brexit debacle has dealt a potentially fatal blow to political unionism. As DUP MLA Edwin Poots commented, reflecting on the historic and […]