All citizens who value the need for publicly owned vital infrastructure would have experienced a shudder of fearful anticipation last month when the Minister for Finance established a Review Group on State Assets and Liabilities. The Department of Finance Press brief’s opening sentence seemed innocuous enough, stating that the... More

“That is no country for old men” wrote WB Yeats in his famous poem, “Sailing to Byzantium”, feeling a cold chill of unwelcome for an aging poet in the society of his time. Speaking of the society created in the Ireland of today by the economic and political establishment, we might rephrase that line to,... More

During the Plenary Session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg last week, there was much talk of financial governance. Measures were tabled which are supposed to put in place a better supervision of the major financial institutions in the light of the world crisis. A proposal was adopted to control bonus payments to senior... More

Note: This article is taken from the Wednesday’s (June 16th) Daily Mail, prior to the results of the Fine Gael leadership battle. There is little that excites the Irish media more than rumours of leadership struggles within the main political parties. These days, the newspapers are in a high state of excitement over the challenge... More

Joe Higgins MEP interviewed on TV Europa about unemployment, the economic crisis and the socialist solution. Read the full transcript of the video here DO YOU AGREE? SUPPORT JOE & THE SOCIALIST PARTY?   Subscribe to Joe's Newsletter | Donate | Get Involved | Join Read More →

The details of the phasing out of the One Parent Family Payment for single parents whose youngest child reaches 13, as opposed to the previous limit of 18 (or 22 if they remained in full time education) is, despite what Minister O’Cuiv asserts, a recipe for driving thousands of families into further poverty. In order to justify... More

In an article published on May 21 in the British current affairs and politics magazine, New Statesman, the editor of BBC2’s Newsnight programme, Paul Mason, concluded with the following sentence: “So phase three of the global crisis poses the following danger: that the fiscal stimulus of the past 18 months produces bankruptcy... More