Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

Hopefully we will hear no more of this ruse. Calling it a local property tax is another cynical ploy. If it is a local property tax, why is its collection centralised in the Revenue agency, which is, itself, highly centralised at national level? That of course arises from a recognition that the imposition of the household tax last year was resisted bitterly by an active boycott. To this day 50% of single-home owners have refused to register for that tax or pay it in a massive show of opposition and civil disobedience to an injustice and an immorality that was being imposed upon them as part of the bailout of bondholders and bankers.

If, however, the Government thinks that people will be cowed next year into paying their property, which they cannot afford, it should think again. There will be massive and organised resistance, an intensified boycott and massive mobilisations. When the Revenue Commissioners sends out demands in March left, right and centre to every home seeking this nefarious new home tax, as we are told it will, there will be a massive revolt.

The property tax is a vicious imposition. What we know of the coming legislation would mark it out as draconian. What is the Government proposing? Next Friday, it is proposing to lash through all of Second Stage, guillotine it after a few hours' debate and ram it through all Stages the following week. What we have is a Fine Gael-Labour Government that is now moving from routinely implementing savage austerity to verging on a financial dictatorship over home owners.

Next year is 2013 - 100 years after the historic 1913 Lock-out when the working-class people of Dublin with significant support from around the country rose in rebellion against impositions and injustices by the employer and capitalist class of the day. They found leaders worthy of them in James Connolly and Jim Larkin and other men and women who gave courageous leadership against the injustices of their day. How ashamed they would be that the injustices are now being imposed by the party they founded. The Labour Party, like William Martin Murphy and the Irish Independent in 1913, will be surprised by the massive opposition and revolt they will face next year.

Capitalism is now a sick system and European capitalism is particularly sick and getting sicker. A total of €3 trillion of accumulated profits is lying uninvested by eurozone big business in banks and speculation while 25 million Europeans languish in enforced idleness through unemployment. That is a sick system and to look to it or to try to tweak or manage it for the benefit of society is futile and destructive. We on the left propose instead a socialist alternative by which the resources of society are freed from that system and from the grips of the bondholders and bankers and utilised for the benefit of society and the majority. In this way, we will remake our society into a place where people can live with dignity, jobs and happiness rather than this nightmare that continues to be criminally imposed by Fine Gael and the Labour Party in budget 2013.

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