ULA launches anti-cuts campaign

The United Left Alliance (ULA) promised a “winter of discontent and strife” as it today launched a public campaign of protests against cuts and the property tax, ahead of December’s budget.

Public resistance would “escalate and be even bigger” than the campaign against the household charge last year People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett said at a press conference today.

The level of austerity was reaching a “tipping point” and if the Government proceeds with budget cuts it would push hundreds of thousands “over the edge” into poverty, Mr Boyd Barrett said.

There was going to be a “winter of resistance and strife” as people “actively resist and oppose the austerity agenda”, Socialist TD Joe Higgins said.

ULA TD Clare Daly said the alliance was using the Oireachtas as a platform to mobilise people to “get up of their knees and protest against vicious austerity”.

Crucial to the battle was the property tax but the “reprehensible” idea of using people’s homes as a vehicle for extra taxation was “morally wrong” and “economically unviable”, she said.

Mr Boyd Barrett criticised moves by some councils to seek proof of household charge payment from some students seeking third level grants. This tactic would “inflame resistance and opposition”, he said.

The moves reflected the council’s desperation, which was not because homeowners refused to pay the household charge but because the Government had cut council budgets, Ms Daly said.