The Socialist Party’s Lisbon Leaflet is now available online. Simply click the image above to flick through it, download a PDF of it,or print it out or email it to a friend.
This government is thoroughly contemptible. Its policies of facilitating the super-rich and its worshipping of private sector greed have resulted in the shameful fact that 455,000 people are on the live register.
At a book launch in early March Minister Pat Rabbitte apparently joked that he had spent another heavy day reducing the living standards of the Irish people! Despite being drenched in cynicism, for once he spoke the truth.
Castlebeck Ltd and Winterbourne View Hospital are names that will not be familiar in this country. Nor will they be, given the very scant coverage in the Irish media of a shocking report published last week, into grotesque abuse by staff at that hospital of adult residents with intellectual disabilities including autism and severe learning difficulties.
The Socialist Party has been in discussion with others on the left with a view to forming an Electoral Alliance for the Local Elections which will take place in June 2009. These discussions have been publicly carried in the pages of our paper "the Socialist" and on this website. The Socialist Party has put forward a very positive proposal for a local election slate of candidates. It is important the slate would field credible candiates with a record in the their area that there is political agreement with the programme of the slate which will flow from discussions. We feel these issues among others mentioned in the material below are extremley important if we are to get aggreement. This is why in these proposals we have provided fuller elaboration of our position in an open, honest and constructive manner we hope that other groups will respond in kind.