The budget delivered as ordered

COMMUNIST PARTY OF IRELAND

James Connolly House, 43 East Essex Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2

7th December 2010


Press release:

The budget delivered as ordered


The much-hyped budget has finally been delivered, much of it leaked over the last number of weeks in a sordid orgy by “informed sources” and the serried ranks of commentators and tame academics, vying with each other to present their interpretation of what each and every leak meant—all contributing to the general strategy of manufacturing the people’s passive consent to the draconian measures finally presented to them.

This budget was designed and manufactured in Brussels, gift-wrapped for the Irish people by this discredited Government, and quietly consented to by Fine Gael and the Labour Party.

The savage cuts in public spending, the cuts in social welfare, childrens allowance, and public sector workers pensions and all the other measures are designed to make working people and the poor pay. The increases in indirect taxes will take more money out of the pockets of working people, small businesses, and the self-employed.

The imposition of new service charges, in the form of water charges, is nothing but a further additional tax on working people. While the the politicians have thrown a bone in the form of cuts in the salaries and pensions of TDs and ministers to placate the growing anger of the people, the homeless and the hungry will remain homeless and hungry. The massed ranks of the unemployed will grow, diminishing only by mass emigration, not by job creation at home.

The central thrust of this budget will not be reversed by whatever combination of parties makes up any future government. The case for a prolonged campaign of civil disobedience and opposition to the new charges has to be the central focus for the trade union movement and all those committed to a socially just Ireland.