In recent years, working people in Ireland and across the world have been confronted with rising prices for food and shelter alongside a dramatic decrease in real income and precarious work. At the same time, we are seeing decreasing expenditure on the public provision of health, education, housing, welfare, and social services, raised retirement ages, attacks on pensions, increased levels of poverty, and homelessness.

Despite these critical issues and despite the emergence of increasingly confident ultra-right elements, by its own admission, the Irish government has said it expects to run a budget surplus of more than €8bn (£6.8bn) in 2024. 2024 will be the third year in a row the government will have taken in more in taxes than it spends.

Meanwhile the chief opposition Party in the Dáil, Sinn Féin, has been running to Silicon Valley and the City of London to assure the finance and tech giants that it will be a safe pair of hands if it gets into government. And some in the People Before Profit/Solidarity party are hoping for a seat or two in government to oversee what would be essentially Blairite policies of mild distribution based on the crumbs thrown on the table by massive multinational corporations. 

All this is no accident. It is an inevitable consequence of the present system in which we live. The problem must be tackled at its root by challenging the ownership and control of the economic system. Those who produce the wealth of the country, the working people, do not own it.

The Workers Party believes in a different world view, a society in which the working people who create all wealth own and control it and use the significant productive potential of the country for the benefit of the working class. However, we recognise that the state and its institutions are not neutral. As James Connolly explained 100 years ago, governments in capitalist society are but committees of the rich to manage the affairs of the capitalist class.

The Workers Party recognises that real and fundamental change requires a break with the present system in which workers are exploited and abused - a transformation of society to create a world which maximises human potential, dignity and development rather than

continue with a system driven by the relentless pursuit of profit for the benefit of the few.

Our policies are put forward in the knowledge that they can only be realistically implemented through successful political and social struggle with a view to winning state power for the working class and completing a programme of fundamental change.

However, the Workers Party immediately demands a decent and dignified life for working people and their families. It is in this context that the Workers’ Party demands an economic strategy which defends the working class and the role of the state within the economy. As noted, the social democratic party, Sinn Féin, and its acolytes are incapable of supplying even that much. It is within this framework that the Workers Party puts forward its platform of progressive policies and demands.

Follow the links below to read about our policies.

 

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