LEADER'S SPEECH:The following is an edited version of the Gerry Adams presidential speech to the ardfheis
TODAY HUNDREDS of thousands of people have marched in this city to defend jobs; to defend public services; to defend our standard of living, and to express their opposition to the policies of the Irish Government.
This ardfheis salutes and supports these efforts.
We also want to extend congratulations and best wishes to Siptu which celebrates 100 years of organising for fairness at work and justice in society.
From the early beginnings with Connolly, Larkin and the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, Siptu has made an enormous contribution to Irish society and to the well-being of workers and their families.
Our economy has been one of the main focuses of this ardfheis. Our economy is in a mess. Global circumstances may have contributed but the decisions and policies of the Fianna Fáil-Green Party Government, and its predecessors, and the greed and dishonesty of some bankers, developers and speculators, have shaped the crisis and left Irish workers and their families desperately vulnerable to its effects.
This Government protects its wealthy friends and targets the sick, the elderly and children. This Government has failed the people. It has opted to pick their pockets and to mug lower and middle-income earners.
At the same time the Government is giving billions of euros to the banks with almost no strings attached.
It is spending public money; the people’s money, to bail out its property developer friends in Anglo Irish Bank, despite the way Anglo Irish and Irish Life Permanent cooked their books.
And the Minister for Finance never bothered to read the relevant documents before sinking taxpayers’ money into a financial cesspit.
The Minister for Finance should do his patriotic duty. He should go. But he should not go on his own. Mr Lenihan should be joined by his friends.
The people cannot afford them. This Government should go also.
Criminality of any kind is unacceptable. All categories of gangsters or banksters must face the full rigours of the law. Gun crime. Drug crime. Blue-collar crime. And white-collar crime must be confronted.
That means that banking executives and others must be rigorously investigated if they have broken the law and like everyone who behaves illegally they must be brought before the courts.
In the boom times Sinn Féin urged investment in public services and in policies that would build for the future. We argued and we insist yet that the economy should serve the public good.
Sinn Féin warned of the consequences of ill-conceived government policies. These policies and the economy they sustain serve private greed.
Our warnings were ignored. We were ridiculed.
Le cúlpa bliain anuas nuair a tharraing muid aire ar an phrácás bhí ár gcairde sna meáin ag spochadh asainn. Dúirt na polaiteoirí eile nár thuig muid cúrsaí airgeadais. Cá bhfuil na fir glice seo anois? There is a lot of talk nowadays about a golden circle. Some senior politicians and commentators behave as if they have just discovered this. They should have gone to Specsavers. Sinn Féin has been warning about our two-tier society for years.
We have made the case again and again that the golden circles of the 1980s never went away. They simply regrouped. And successive governments ruled in their interests and squandered the wealth created by Irish workers.
The boom times presented a historic opportunity: to deliver universal first class health services; to invest, especially in new schools, social housing and public transport links and our rail services; to tackle disadvantage, poverty and inequality. And to build the infrastructure required to ensure the future stability of the Irish economy.
The Government chose to do none of these things. So, following years of unprecedented exchequer surpluses the Irish people are left with waiting lists for essential hospital treatments and queues in AE departments.
Thousands of children being taught in prefabs while the Government withdraws special teacher support from those with special needs.
We are left with a housing list that grows longer while thousands of unsold housing units fill empty sites across the country.
We are left with the withdrawal of over 10 per cent of public bus services from our capital city and this on the watch of a Green Party Minister.
Lest the electorate forget, Fianna Fáil in the last election made outlandish promises they knew they couldn’t keep.
Lest the electorate forget, Fine Gael made the same implausible promises as Fianna Fáil.
However, unlike other parties Sinn Féin set out proposals around job creation and the housing market that would have ensured a softer landing.
We proposed tax reform that would have given the State more resources to cope with the economic downturn.
Even now, if these policies were implemented they could still help turn the economy around.
There should also be an end to the huge salaries and expenses given to high-ranking public servants, politicians and the other high rollers who have milked the system for many years. I include all Government Ministers in this.
Let’s take the Minister of Health as an example. Her remuneration is €230,000 annually. This is as much as the president of the republic of France and more than the British prime minister.
HSE chief Brendan Drumm has a salary of €320,000 plus an annual bonus in case he is stuck of €80,000. Which means we pay him more than the people of the USA pay their president.
And there’s more. What sort of suckers are we that we put up with it. Bank CEOs taking home three million euros a year.
Heads of State companies on well over half-a-million euros.
It’s obscene. It must stop. Look at the North. There the DUP is working with us – this is a party established to block civil rights reform, a party which opposed powersharing and the Good Friday Agreement.
The DUP is now working all-Ireland institutions.
Holding that party to its commitments and ensuring that the equality agenda of the Good Friday and St Andrews Agreements are delivered is hard work.
But unionist politicians now know that if they wish to exercise political power they can only do so in partnership with the rest of us. It is a battle a day, every day, over education, the environment, Acht na Gaeilge and much more.
But we have made progress in the transfer of powers on policing and justice, in tackling fuel poverty; in securing additional funding for economic investment and for tackling rural poverty, and in deferring water charges.
Education Minister Caitríona Ruane is carrying out the most far-reaching and fundamental reform of the North’s education system in 60 years.
Why? Look at last year’s figures for children transferring from primary school to grammar schools: These figures are for Belfast but the story is the same throughout the six counties. On the Falls 44. On the Shankill 10. On the Malone Road 214. Something is wrong there. We want all children to do as well as the young people on the Malone Road. Along with our dedicated team of Ministers and MLAs and party activists, Martin McGuinness and our other representatives have made a real and positive difference in people’s lives. But there is still enormous work to be done.
For our part, we fully understand the need to persuade unionists of the desirability of a shared, united Ireland.
Republicans and democrats, all sensible people, believe that the union with Britain is a nonsense, even in these more enlightened times. Under the union, unionists make up fewer that 2 per cent of the kingdom – I don’t mean Kerry. They would constitute 20 per cent of the new republic. They would be citizens, not mere subjects. They would have rights, not concessions.
They would belong. They would be welcome. We have to persuade them of this. So too does the Irish Government.
This party are not European sceptics. We are for a European union of equal states; a Europe of democracy and transparency; a social Europe.
We objected to the last Lisbon Treaty because, unlike others, we read it. And we realised that it represented a dilution of democracy, an assault on workers’ rights, a more militarised Europe, a more centralised bureaucracy in Brussels and a transfer of power from the smaller member states to the larger ones.
The electorate agreed with us.
It is an insult to ask citizens to consider the same treaty again.
A new treaty is needed. A new treaty for new times. This is what Sinn Féin will campaign for. And we will base our campaign on what we consider to be in the best interests of the Irish people and the people of Europe.
These are hard times in Ireland. Though people in other places, as we have seen, have harder times. But in hard times we are especially called upon to come forward. To be positive.
Now is the time for another great national revival of our language and arts, our culture. Now is the time to build national morale. To ensure that the Irish language flourishes.
Tá obair maith ag dul ar aghaidh sa pháirtí le cur chun cinn na Gaeilge, go háirthe leis na cumainn gaelacha. Ach tá alán le déanamh go fóill.
Sinn Féin is still guided by the ideals of public service and patriotism of those who assembled in Dublin’s Mansion House in January 1919.The First Dáil Éireann set out a visionary democratic programme of social and economic goals based on equality. It is as relevant in Ireland today as it was in 1919.
The democratic programme declared that Irish society would be governed “in accordance with the principles of liberty, equality and justice for all”. And it committed the Republic “to make provision for the physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing of the children” and to ensure that “no child shall suffer hunger or cold from lack of food, clothing, or shelter”.
The democratic programme also declared “the right of every citizen to an adequate share of the produce of the nation’s labour” and that the Republic has a duty to “safeguard the health of the people”.
And it promised that the aged and infirm would “no longer be regarded as a burden, but rather, entitled to the nation’s gratitude and consideration”.
Isn’t it little wonder that the Government forgot to book the Mansion House for the 90th anniversary on January 21st?
The first Dáil was not about political elites, gombeen men, golden circles or cosy cartels.
The dominance in this State of two large conservative parties can be brought to an end if a new alignment in Irish politics, North and South, can be created.
The replacement of the current coalition at some future election by another coalition with Fine Gael as the main party would be like replacing Tweedledum with Tweedledee.
They will make their own decisions, but in my view the Labour Party has a duty not to prop up either Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. Instead Labour should explore with us and others the potential for co-operation in the future.
I want to invite all these potential allies to come together to forge a stronger, more united progressive and democratic movement for our country – one that aims to meet the needs of all citizens.
I include parties like Labour, the Greens, if they can survive the fallout from their participation in this Government; other smaller parties; the trade unions; the community organisations that are on the frontline in the struggle for equality; Gaelgeoirí; rural agencies and organisations, including farming bodies and fishing communities; women’s groups; the students; youth organisations and especially those who speak for the disabled, the poor, the unemployed, the homeless and the marginalised in our society.
Sinn Féin is ready to join with all of those who want real change and who recognise that the road to real change requires unity of purpose, of ideas and of energy.
Gerry Adams’s full address is available on the Irish Times website, www.irishtimes.com