People Before Profit to field 43 candidates in local elections

The People Before Profit Alliance will field 43 candidates in the forthcoming local elections with water charges and housing issues the top issues for their campaign.

Launching its manifesto in Dublin yesterday, the party claimed to be the “biggest organised political intervention in elections by the socialist left probably in the history of the State”.

Richard Boyd Barrett TD, director of elections, said the context of the vote in three weeks' time was one of "absolutely seething anger" with the political establishment.

He said the electoral landscape had been shaped by a “Government who had betrayed all of the promises they made before the last general election and has rained down betrayal, cuts and austerity on the innocent victims of this economic crisis”.

“Our feedback on the door is that it’s going to be payback day for the Government,” Mr Boyd Barrett said.

The manifesto, running to about ten pages, includes a call to cut expensive consultants, revamp commercial rates and more strategic planning to revitalise town centres.

Some 15 candidates attended the launch at Buswell’s Hotel and several made contributions with the main themes being the lack of housing provision, spiralling rental costs, the related difficulty of access to the private market and water charges to the fore.

Mr Boyd Barrett said it was not all about winning elections.

He saidthey were using it to build “mass resistance” to water charges and to publicise a forthcoming national demonstration in September.

Almost half the 43 seats being contested by the alliance, are outside the capital.

The alliance also points to a 40 per cent female candidate proportion, more it says than any other political organisation.

People Before Profit European candidate Brid Smith said the alliance had support as evidenced by the fact that people are "beginning to mobilise on the ground against water charges."