The recent report by the ESRI on negative equity in the Irish housing market exposes the black hole that Irish householders were lead into by the speculators and the banks. The ESRI estimates that up to one third of mortgage holders, nearly 200,000 householders, could be trapped with mortgages vastly exceeding the value of their... More

It is a privilege to be invited to join other public representatives from the European revolutionary left this weekend to address Greek workers and activists at forums in Athens and Salonika. I will bring the experience of Irish working people into the forums that I will be addressing and which I expect are fundamentally similar... More

Today the EU Commission signals its approval for NAMA. Their timing may well prove unfortunate for them as even among some of our domestic pro-capitalist economic commentators, an early verdict has been passed that the valuations of land and property due to be taken over by NAMA are grossly overpriced. Consider, for example, the... More

Bank of Scotland (Ireland) has decided to close its Halifax outlets with the resulting loss. This must not be accepted. The financial institutions should be in public ownership and run democratically to meet societies needs. There are further indications today that this announcement will be followed by an even greater slashing of... More

Minister Dara Calleary, together with the representatives of the bosses, are now more and more vocally pushing to reduce the minimum wage and tear up Registered Employment Agreements in particular sectors. This is a disgrace and must be fought. Mark Fielding, Chief Executive of ISME, spelt it out for low paid workers when he admitted... More

The Green Party is reported to be discussing with Fianna Fáil measures that will prevent householders in mortgage arrears arising from hardships such as job losses. In reality their proposals are far too little. Householders need radical reductions of the principal on their mortgages. The Greens are talk about measures like re-scheduling... More

Last Friday McCarthy admitted that ‘An Bord Snip Nua’ was a ‘political exercise’, which was used to create a climate where drastic cuts in public services would be seen as inevitable. Here Joe Higgins discusses how this lays bare the manipulation of the public debate by the government and the media. Mr McCarthy... More