ALL the political parties in Ireland are committed to social justice; they differ only as to how it should be achieved. Unlike Labour, the Progressive Democrats do not believe that the best way to achieve it is through more tax, more quangos, and more government regulation.

You would not think that that was the case from last week's article in this newspaper by the Labour Party Junior Minister, Ms Joan Burton.

Let me first dismiss the crude smear that the Progressive Democrats would cut the old age pension. This is the equivalent of the "reds under the bed" scares of earlier years. It is a pity the tone of political debate in this country has been reduced to these levels.

I don't need lessons in social justice from the Labour Party or anybody else.

During our time in government, a typical pensioner would have seen his or her income rise by 14 per cent. These increases were paid when external economic factors were by no means as favourable as they are now.

Does Labour really believe they are the only true moral conscience of the nation? If so, where was that moral conscience when that party supported the tax amnesty, a fraudsters' charter that allowed some of our most notorious criminals to profit from their illgotten gains?

Why does Minister Burton continually misrepresent New Zealand as some kind of hell hole where pensioners and the poor have been driven to the soup kitchens?

THE Progressive Democrats have cited New Zealand as but one example of a liberal democracy where the government has decided to reduce incometaxes and to encourage work while maintaining the same level of social services that one would expect in any European democracy.

These policies have been highly successful, and New Zealand has created some 200,000 new jobs in the past three years. The rate of unemployment in New Zealand, at 6 per cent, is half the rate in Ireland.

For the record, the old age pension in New Zealand is some £30 a week higher than it is in Ireland. New Zealanders enjoy free in patient treatment in public hospitals, free home nursing for the sick and elderly, and an excellent network of services for pre school children.

Instead of misrepresenting the situation in New Zealand, Minister Burton might do well to look at how things are closer to home - under her own nose, in fact.

Ms Burton is Minister of State at the Department of Justice, the Department responsible for law and order. Perhaps she might like to reflect on the performance of her own Department and the kind of society she is fostering here in Ireland.

What does the Minister think of a [society in which heroin is sold openly on the streets to children as young as nine years of age?

What does the Minister think of a society where contract killings can be carried out for a few thousand pounds and where the perpetrators are never caught?

What does the Minister think of a society where people sent to prison for serious crimes of violence can nip down to the pub at night for a few pints?

Maybe the Minister should spend more time attending to her day job in the Department of Justice and devote less time to trying to smear others.

By the time of the next election, the Labour Party will have been in power for 10 out of the past 15 years.

No other party in recent times has had such access to political power in this country and such opportunity to set the political agenda.

ONE only has to look around to see the kind of legacy that the high minded social engineers of the Labour Party will leave behind them. Under Labour's guidance we have succeeded in creating a Latin American style society in Ireland.

I know a not untypical community in Dublin where 38 per cent of families are headed by single parents, where 88 per cent of the people have no job, and where 60 per cent of families have at least one drug addict in the house. The people in these communities are almost entirely detached from the normal workings of society, and are effectively denied any opportunity of enjoying the fruits of economic growth.

Things do not have to be this way. The Progressive Democrats offer an alternative and less divisive vision of Irish society.

We want to see a society where all the children of the nation have access educational opportunities, not one where 40 per cent of them leave school officially classified as educationally disadvantaged.

We want to see a society where the State affords protection to all of its citizens, not one where whole communities in our major cities are abandoned to a culture of crime, lawlessness and drug abuse.

We want to see a society where everybody who can work has a job to go to, not one where hundreds off thousands of people are condemned to lifelong idleness and hopelessness.

Joan Burton wants to know if the Progressive Democrats are in favour of social consensus. Yes we are, but not the kind of consensus that gives rise to social deprivation, social division and social exclusion.

The false consensus of recent years has produced an apartheid society in Ireland. We must now build a new consensus, one that will allow all sections of society to participate, to prosper, and to enjoy the fruits of economic growth.

That is the political challenge now facing us.