Farce and grim comedy overshadowed last week’s announcement of a programme for government in southern Ireland, following November’s Dáil [parliament] elections. The incoming government will once again see right wing Fine Gael coalescing with right wing Fianna Fáil, aided by a motley crew of independent TDs [members of parliament] who will make up the numbers. Micheál Martin will be Taoiseach [prime minister] with the role passing to Simon Harris in 2027. Dozens of ‘Super Junior’ ministers, all on significantly enhanced pay, will characterise the incoming government. Even grimmer farce is provided by the spectacle of independent TDs pressing their demands to simultaneously support the government while availing of opposition speaking time. A situation, ludicrous as it is, which, it appears, will nonetheless be permitted in the next Dáil.
Amid the brazen egoism and titanic self-importance of the parties and individuals who will form the next government, the key elements of their agreed programme signal a further entrenchment of the dominant right wing neo-liberal economic consensus.
All of the independent TDs hail from the most socially reactionary elements of Irish society. From the criminally corrupt Michael Lowry to the far-right sympathising Noel Grealish, these forces will likely push Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil further to the right. Not that there will be much pushing needed.
Housing crisis to continue along with further attacks on workers
From the perspective of the working-class majority two things stick out from the programme for government. First, the policies which have led to a near decade and a half long housing crisis, and record level of homelessness, will continue. ‘The market’ and delivering super profits to property developers and landlords will remain the overriding priority for the new government.
Second is a clear determination to push through a brutal ‘race to the bottom’ under the smokescreen of supporting small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). This part of the Southern capitalist economy is where the Irish capitalist class exercise almost total control. It is characterised by low wages, poor conditions, economic precarity and often extreme levels of exploitation.
Sectors such as logistics, security, hospitality, retail, catering, childcare, food processing and private nursing provision are the bedrock of the domestic economy and where hundreds of thousands of workers earn their living. Trade unions have struggled to gain a foothold in these sectors. The bosses have fought tenaciously to union bust any and all attempts to organise.
Workers not SMEs should be the priority
By so forcefully emphasising its determination to support SMEs this government clearly intends to unleash a legislative offensive that will severely attack the livelihoods and living conditions of workers. The programme for government features page after page of measures intended to ‘support business’. By contrast the obligation to introduce collective bargaining legislation, something too many in the trade union movement are relying on to address declining membership, merits just one single sentence.
Any state supports for small businesses should be solely to protect jobs and to improve working conditions. They should be strictly conditional on compulsory recognition of trade unions; the payment of living wages; the provision of all sick leave and annual leave entitlements and an end to precarity. This programme for government provides for none of this but is, instead, a blank cheque for an assault on workers in SMEs.
Trade unions must prepare to fight back
With global economic turmoil increasing there are sure to be tremors soon within the Irish economy. The nature of this government should make it clear to all that they will attempt to resolve any economic problems through austerity, privatisation, attacks on the public sector, low pay and worsening the working and living conditions of the working class majority.
The trade union movement faces a stark choice. Go along with the legislative agenda outlined in the programme for government, or fight it tooth and nail. Figures like Verona Murphy, the new Ceann Comhairle [Speaker of the Dail], are class warriors. They will use every available lever of state power to force through their agenda. The labour movement will be forced to consider tactics such as mass civil disobedience and so-called ‘illegal’ strikes. There can be no doubt that an offensive against the working class is being prepared. We must organise to fight back. There is no other alternative.
