This article by Eoin Ó Murchú first appeared in Unity, the weekly publication of the Irish Communist Party.
With administrations North and South failing completely to address the serious shortcomings in people’s living standards, and with crises in housing and health causing massive hardship and desperation, it is becoming more important than ever that the trade union movement lives up to the fine words uttered at last week’s ICTU national congress in Belfast. Central to the debates was the need for a new socially driven economic model. This model will put social need ahead of private greed, but it needs government commitment also to make sure that welfare is not sacrificed on the war delusions of NATO and the EU.
This is where the problem lies. The British government, under the reactionary Keir Starmer, is determined to indulge its imperialist fantasies, and one of the biggest losers is the North of Ireland, where social spending lags seriously behind. Meanwhile, in the South, the Dublin government is determined to jettison neutrality in all but name, and to pump millions, needed for social protection and for economic development in the wake of tariff changes with the US, into ‘defence’ spending instead.
So, month by month there are new shameful records of homelessness, while huge swathes of the population are driven into the private rental market where they are fleeced by unscrupulous landlords and vulture funds. In health, lengthening waiting lists exacerbate social anxiety, with 12 out of every 1,000 people on waiting lists waiting for 18 months or more. In the North, despite the NHS with its theoretical emphasis on free treatment at need, the waiting lists are even worse with a massive 86 out of every 1,000 waiting for more than 18 months.
Planning problems and poor infrastructure in both jurisdictions add to the problems of developing a balanced economy, against a background where even those with good well-paid jobs are challenged to the pin of their collar to make ends meet. Water infrastructure, or more accurately the lack of it, is now admitted to be a major stumbling block to house construction, without which rents rocket skywards and mortgages become unobtainable. Uisce Éireann suggests that the state needs an investment of €10.3 billion to provide what is needed up to 2029, with the construction industry calling for an annual €500 million to be ring-fenced for water infrastructure for new house building each year.
In the North, £300 million a year is being invested in water infrastructure compared to the £500 million that NI Water says it needs, and the £640 million which the construction industry is calling for. While the South has the option of reforming its taxation system to transfer wealth from the rich to the poor, the North is totally dependent on whatever the British government allows – and that, as is seen, is totally inadequate.
These issues were addressed at the ICTU congress, but given the stranglehold which the present political situation has over the economy, there is an urgent need for the aspirations voiced at congress to be made a reality by action. The Stormont executive operates for most of the time in a disjointed sectarian joust, with only rare examples of the major parties coming together to advance joint programmes. The result is a lack of focus and purpose, and a constant failure to redress the serious social and economic issues facing the North. In the South, the trade union movement has called for a unity of the Left parties to get the present crowd out and open up the possibility of a genuine change in economic direction.