SOCIALIST PARTY:THE SOCIALIST Party published its election manifesto yesterday with a call for a vote for a "strong opposition" of candidates of the left to hold the mainstream parties to account in the Dáil.
Socialist MEP Joe Higgins, who is standing in Dublin West, said Labour and Fine Gael were “masquerading” as opposition to Fianna Fáil, but were committed to the same parameters as the outgoing Government.
A new government would continue the policy of “austerity and cutbacks”, and would contribute to a worsening of the economic crisis and to more unemployment and emigration.
The Socialist Party said the billions being used to bail out the banks should be used to create public sector jobs and to develop essential infrastructure.
Among its policies it advocates tax on the “super-wealthy”, an increase in corporate tax to 25 per cent and a cap of €100,000 on public sector salaries.
On the EU-IMF bailout, the party said the idea that Ireland would not be able to get credit and would financially collapse if the bondholders were not paid was “wrong”.
It said the debts to the EU-IMF would “choke the economy”, taking €10 billion – or 20 per cent of tax revenue – in 2014.
Cllr Mick Barry said Fine Gael and Labour’s pledge to renegotiate the bailout was an attempt to pretend they could “turn a rotten deal into a good one”.
Mr Higgins said the Socialist Party was taking a different approach to parties who come in “with a raft of facts and figures about how they will manage the cuts”.
“We do not do that because we say, on the basis of the present crisis-ridden economy, that you cannot manage it.”
Mr Higgins said that the Socialist Party had joined with other groups to form the United Left Alliance, which was running candidates in almost half the 43 constituencies.
He said the next Dáil needed a “strong opposition and alternative” to what the polls suggested would be “a big majority for Fine Gael and Labour, supported from the outside by Fianna Fáil”.
“You could have a crushing majority for these savage policies that are not supported by the Irish people.”
Dublin North candidate Clare Daly favoured capping salaries in the public sector at €100,000, and said the party was “absolutely opposed” to how the main parties were “attacking those at the bottom and the middle”.
Citing recent figures from Social Justice Ireland, Ms Daly noted that the top 10 per cent of the population shared the same disposable income as the bottom 50 per cent.
Her party saw society at present as “being organised as a sort of Robin Hood in reverse where they rob from the poor or the medium-sized to line the pockets of those at the top”.
“We stand for standing that on its head, for a society that would be run in the interests of the majority, not the few.”
The candidates are Joe Higgins (Dublin West); Clare Daly (Dublin North); Conor MacLiam (Carlow-Kilkenny); Mick Barry (Cork North Central); Brian Greene (Dublin North East); Mick Murphy (Dublin South West); Rob Connolly (Dublin Mid West) and Cian Prendiville (Limerick City).