Well respected blog "NamaWineLake" has made it's final post. This is a great loss to the Irish online community. Thanks for all your great work NWL! ... read full story / add a comment

SIPTU members at Shanganagh Waste Water Treatment Plant, Co. Dublin, began strike action today (Tuesday, 21st May) at 6.30 a.m. in response to their employer’s failure to refer a dispute relating to pay and shift premium payments to the Labour Court. ... read full story / add a comment

From Justice Minister Alan Shatter's statement on mortgage default and repossessions ,Dec 2012

"All mortgages contain remedies that may be exercised by lending institutions in cases of mortgage default. Repossession in the event of such default is, therefore, an existing contractual right.
In a well-known 2011 case (Start Mortgages), the High Court found that enactment of reforming legislation in 2009 may have had the unintended consequence in certain cases of restricting lending institutions from asserting their repossession rights. ... read full story / add a comment

In the last week or so it was announced by the government that they were seriously considering extending the current free Pre-School year to a second free pre-school year. The government has been giving it a positive spin but also on the table as part of the deal is the suggestion that child benefit would be reduced by €20 per month. A lot of figures have been bandied about but the real question is: are the government trying to pull a fast one yet again and how do the numbers stack up? We attempt to look at the figures here. ... read full story / add a comment

9 May 2013

Press statement: Joe Higgins TD

Supreme Court ruling on Registered Employment Agreements poses need for organising drive by union movement as first step in protection of conditions

Commenting on today's Supreme Court ruling that Registered Employment Agreements are unconstitutional Joe Higgins TD said:

"The striking down by the Supreme Court of the REAs will be seen by employers and sub contractors as a signal for a savage attack on the wages and conditions of workers. The trade union movement should immediately declare that any such attacks will be met by all out action and must now go on the offensive to ensure that wages and conditions provided for by the REAs remain intact.

"Today's ruling is further proof that the judiciary in the final analysis contains an inherent bias against the interests of working people. Employers have allies in the top echelons of the state who are prepared to strike down the legal underpining of conditions in the private sector that exceed the statutory minimum wage. ... read full story / add a comment

Galway Pro-Choice condemns the passing of three motions at today's Fianna Fail Ard Fheis which oppose suicide being included as a ground for abortion under proposed X Case legislation. In particular, we condemn the decision of the Galway East Comhairle Dáil Ceantair of Fianna Fáil to propose one of these motions which would continue to place women’s lives in danger.

Orlaith Reidy of Galway Pro Choice said:

“The motions presented to the Ard Fheis reveal a fundamental disregard for women's health. As Dr. Peadar O'Grady of Doctors for Choice has outlined, denying women the right to choose is a key cause of suicidality among pregnant women, and maternal deaths have markedly declined in countries where abortion is available.” ... read full story / add a comment

The central bank is planning changes to the Code of Protection on mortgage arrears, these changes will mean it will be easier for people to be counted as non co-operating and thus make repossession easier, please send the submission below to code@centralbank.ie or make your own submission and send before April 10th to ensure your opposition to this is taken into consideration, with 95,000 people in arrears because of this banking led recession, the people who are bailing out the banks need fairness, there is nothing fair in all powers of discretion, supervision and appeals being with the banks who will not consider the good of the person or common good of the country. ... read full story / add a comment

On Sat April 13th the EU Ministers of Finance are assembled in Dublin Castle. Join the National Protest to Stop Property Tax Robbery Assemble 12:30 Garden of Remembrance / Parnell Square to march to Dublin castle #ResistTheRobbery #A13 ... read full story / add a comment

OSSL claim that their company was a supplier to Shell in respect of the Corrib Gas Project. They allege that acting on Shell’s instructions, OSSL has distributed bribes on Shell’s behalf to parties connected with the project, including the Irish police force (the Garda) who have been the subject of serious accusations of wrong doing by environmental activists protesting against the project. The main accusation being that the Garda has acted as an offshoot of Shell security. ... read full story / add a comment

A Complete List of Ireland's Easter Republican Commemorations 2013 ... read full story / add a comment

Revisionists given a hammering by John Borgonovo . They are searching for an ouija board to contact Peter Hart for advice. Full text at link.

UCC historian John Borgonovo casts doubt on some claims made in the TV3 series ‘In The Name Of The Republic’
TV3’s TWO-PART documentary series, In the Name of the Republic has created a stir among historians, though perhaps not in the way the filmmakers intended. The programme illustrates the danger of accepting local folklore as historical fact, especially during this much-heralded “decade of centenaries”.

In the first episode, viewers met an aged Co Laois man who related his boyhood encounter with a neighbouring farmer, who claimed he had dug up a body while ploughing his field, one of three corpses supposedly buried there by the IRA. Series host Prof Eunan O’Halpin (of Trinity College Dublin) told the audience hisresearch had uncovered two civilians abducted by the Tipperary IRA and “never seen again”. The rest of the episode attempted to prove his theory that they were interred in this Laois field. The episode concluded with O’Halpin opening the sealed files, only to learn that both had survived the conflict. They were never killed by the IRA, much less secretly buried in Laois. The obvious lesson here is: Finish your research before you rent the JCB.

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John and Louise are a Dublin couple who weep each evening in a cold house, their frustration ever growing. John is visibly angry but resigns to the fate that is meted by our leaders to comply with international dictate. We are being watched, pummelled and slowly destroyed. The busiest events are international job fairs. This is a synopsis of lives less than they should be. ... read full story / add a comment

The government is planning to sell off our national forests which are currently owned by Coillte. The plan would be to sell harvesting rights on 500,000 acres out of 1.2 million that they manage. They claim it is worth €700 million although in the Peter Bacon report on Forestry, he puts the true value at €360 million or the equivalent of 3 days of government expenditure. Bacon said: "economic rationale for the proposed sale of harvesting rights no longer stands up and cannot be justified." and that he further concluded it would actually cost the state €1,300 million to sell the harvesting rights of Coillte due to various liabilities. The report says that the forests should be developed further as a public resource. ... read full story / add a comment

MA Community Education, Equality and Social Activism podcast

A podcast of this remarkable political intervention (March 13, 2013) is now available at the website of the MA in Community Education, Equality and Social Activism (CEESA). ... read full story / add a comment

The Woodland League wish to highlight the fact that Coillte since 2009 have already sold 108 million euros of trees with harvesting rights, to IFUT ( Irish Forestry Unit Trust ) a pension fund company, of which they are partners. In a bizarre situation, Coillte have used these proceeds to pay off some of its own large pension fund debts. The National Pension Reserve Fund has also been used by IFUT to fund these sales and its contribution obscured within IFUT’s bail out of Coillte. This is not how this vital Public NPRF funding should be used, it is supposed to be invested in the peoples future. http://www.nprf.ie/Publications/2011/NPRFReport2010.pdf
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To defeat the property tax YOU have to get involved Don’t register for the tax – do not return the form which the Revenue Commissioners will send to you in March Go to your local public meeing when it is held and find out how you can become an acive member of the campaign Join any local or naional protests which the campaign organises. ... read full story / add a comment

From next week the latest bitter austerity pill will be administered to our hard pressed low and middle income earners as letters arrive in every home from the Revenue Commissioners demanding the new property tax. Although having the Revenue logo, they will arrive by edict of the Troika, the economic dictators who are being allowed to walk with jackboots over the living standards of our people, courtesy of the connivance of gutless politicians who comprise the Fine Gael and Labour parties, and before them, Fianna Fail. And never forget, this is another tribute exacted to bail out the private gambling debts of the bankers and bondholders who wrecked this economy. ... read full story / add a comment

This month a group of socialist and republican activists from a variety of backgrounds throughout Ireland came together in Dublin to establish the Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum. The concept of the forum arose from a series of seminars that in turn had their origin in a symposium on “Republicanism in the Twenty-First Century” hosted by the Communist Party in September last year.

The aim of the forum is to promote the ideas of socialist republicanism, as best expressed by James Connolly, Liam Mellows, and Peadar O’Donnell. The forum is named after Peadar O’Donnell in recognition of his outstanding role as a union organiser, republican soldier, author, enemy of fascism, friend of the worker and small farmer, committed socialist, and lifelong activist for peace and against imperialism.

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Statement from participants in the No Fracking Ireland Network on the EPA ‘public consultation’ process with regard to ‘Proposed terms of reference for EPA/DCENR/NIEA Research Programme on Environmental Impacts of Unconventional Gas Exploration & Extraction (UGEE)’
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This was originally published by Gluaiseacht in a publication released at the time of the 2012 Grassroots Gathering in Galway. ... read full story / add a comment