CPI standing in local elections

 

The Communist Party of Ireland is putting forward two candidates in the coming local elections, one in Dublin and one in Cork. Both candidates handed in their nomination papers today (Wednesday 30 April) to the respective county and city council.

                The two CPI candidates are standing on a platform of repudiating the debt, breaking with the euro, and reclaiming Ireland’s sovereignty.

                They will be making the point that the payment of the “national debt” is being used as a means of imposing permanent austerity and attacking workers’ wages and conditions, pensions, social welfare entitlements, and local services.

                The candidates are Paul Doran for South Dublin County Council and Michael O’Donnell for Cork City Council. They are standing on a clear platform calling for the repudiation of the anti-people debt, breaking with the euro, and reclaiming our country’s political and economic sovereignty.

                The CPI is aware that there is no real power or democracy left at the local government level, that real power lies with the unelected county and city managers, who take their orders and priorities from the minister, who in turn takes his orders from Brussels—the ultimate arbiter of power and control over our people. The EU determines the overall political, economic and social policy of this state. Democracy at all levels is little more than a hollowed-out shell: it exists in form but not in content.

                The CPI is using the occasion of these elections to present an alternative way out of the crisis, one that is centred on the needs of the people and not the EU and IMF and the Irish ruling class. It is campaigning for a radical economic, social and democratic transformation of our country where real power lies with the people to change things.

 

Biographical Details:

The two candidates chosen to stand have a record of struggle at both the local and the national level.

Paul Doran, an office worker, is standing in the Clondalkin area of South Dublin County Council. He has been living in Clondalkin for over thirty years and has participated in many campaigns in that time, both at the local and the national level. He  played a leading role in securing new premises for his local Irish-medium school, Gaelscoil na Camóige.

Michael O’Donnell, a retired secondary teacher, is standing in the Cork North-East area of Cork City Council. He is a lifelong trade unionist and during a period as an economic migrant in Britain was a member of the Connolly Association. He knows and has experienced the hardship and difficulties faced by immigrant workers. He is acutely aware of the effect that emigration has on families and communities as our people once again face the daunting task of travelling to all corners of the globe looking for work, to find a new life for themselves and their families.