Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The Anti-Austerity Alliance-People Before Profit group of Deputies would like to propose a socialist nominee for Taoiseach, and we propose Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett. As we approach the centenary of the Rising, about which we will hear a lot over the next number of weeks, it is clear that we live in a very unjust society, where vast wealth is concentrated in the hands of a tiny few while the majority have seen their living standards plummet. A crisis rages in health and housing, and an attempt is being made to turn water into a commodity capable of being privatised and fetching a profit. To this day, the church remains entangled with the State and women are denied their civil rights on abortion.

It is clear that, as James Connolly said a hundred years ago, the day has passed for patching up the capitalist system; it must go. We need democratic public control and ownership of wealth and resources if society is to be run for people's needs, not profit. We need a separation of church and State.

Today, we will not vote for the identical twin candidates of the two parties that imposed austerity in this country, nor can we endorse the candidate of a party that is claiming to be the friend of ordinary people while implementing austerity in the North and which is based on one side of the community. All three candidates who have been proposed accept the crumbs of the fiscal space and thus cannot deliver the real change that is needed by the majority in society. We need the immediate abolition of the water charges, which were clearly rejected by the majority of the electorate, and we support and call for an extension of the boycott to make sure those charges are finished off while the two parties dither over whether they will carry out abolition. Neither can we wait any longer for a State-backed housing programme to deal with the housing emergency and for NAMA to be declared an agency for affordable housing, which the previous Government refused to do. We need to end the 32-year hypocrisy of the eighth amendment to the Constitution and allow women to make this decision for themselves in all cases, not just a few. To fund our public services, we need to end the use of our country as a tax haven and to take control of the wealth of the 1%.

James Connolly wanted to change the system, and we agree with him. Sixteen days before the Rising, Connolly outlined who will change Ireland, and in whose interests, when he said in the pages of The Workers' Republic:

Not the rack-renting, slum-owning landlord; not the sweating, profit-grinding capitalist; not the sleek and oily lawyer; not the prostitute pressman – the hired liars of the enemy. Not these are the Irish upon whom the future depends. Not these, but the Irish working class, the only secure foundation upon which a free nation can be reared.

The candidates of the socialist left will not win the position of Taoiseach today but, in standing, we are making a declaration of intent in this Dáil. We intend to have a strong, independent voice for workers in this Dáil. We invite everybody who wants real change in this country to get involved in the political process and to join with us to help build a new mass party for working people in this country in order to finally replace the thoroughly discredited and compromised Labour Party, a party of working people for working people and for a society ruled and run by working people in the interests of the majority. To this end, I propose Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett for the position of Taoiseach in the 32nd Dáil.

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