Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I will be speaking in this debate for Solidarity and for Solidarity alone. Today Northern Ireland is in crisis. Everyone here almost certainly agrees with this statement, but there are very different views as to why there is a crisis and as to the way forward.

The Executive collapsed nearly a year ago and there is no sign of the necessary level of agreement to bring it back. The short-term cause of the collapse is that the working arrangement between the two main parties fell apart in January. However, there is a more fundamental problem. The institutions established under the Good Friday Agreement are based on an unstable agreement to differ between diametrically opposed forces. There is no real agreement and there never will be until the third tradition, the trade union and labour tradition, asserts itself politically and in clear opposition to both nationalism and unionism.

For now, parties based on sectarian division are in the ascendancy. The two largest parties, Sinn Féin and the DUP, have eclipsed their rivals not by their ability to compromise but by their ability to exploit and magnify every disagreement. When parties are based on sectarian division it is inevitable that they will use all issues to deepen sectarian division. The end result is sectarian paralysis and sharp disagreements on issue after issue.

Brexit is one of these divisive issues. Both the DUP and Sinn Féin are exploiting the fears of ordinary people around Brexit to bolster their positions. The result is increasing political polarisation. The words and actions of green Tories in this State, including the Taoiseach and Tánaiste, are contributing to this polarisation.

Solidarity is clear on the key Brexit issues. We are opposed to any hardening of the border between North and South. A hard border would have a negative impact on the lives of working people. We are also opposed to any hardening of the border between Ireland and Britain and for exactly the same reason. We are not in favour of a Brexit which favours the bosses of the EU or the bosses of the UK. The current negotiations are a battle between rival capitalists and are not designed in any way to look after the interests of working people, North or South. Solidarity will call out every step which works against the interests of working people, North and South.

Of course Sinn Féin and the DUP do not disagree on everything. Sinn Féin is loud in its support for equal rights for all but apparently this does not extend to a woman's right to choose. It is as one with the DUP in refusing to extend abortion rights to Northern Ireland.

The DUP claims that its deal with the Tories has brought an extra £1 billion and protected Northern Ireland from the worst of the cuts, but it votes through every aspect of the Conservative Party programme. Sinn Féin claims that it stands firm against Tory austerity but hands power to implement benefit cuts back to Westminster in order to avoid any flak for these savage cuts. Both parties are absolutely complicit in implementing austerity.

Ordinary people in the North are left to cope with falling real wages and continuing attacks on health, education and welfare. For example, on Monday of this week a major review on social care in Northern Ireland was published. Currently domiciliary care - personal care delivered to people in their own homes - is provided free by the National Health Service. This is not the case with nursing home care, which is charged for after a means test. The report recommends addressing this unfairness, but not by making all care free. Instead it recommends that care packages delivered in the home should also be charged for. This is a clear case of levelling down, not levelling up. Who commissioned this report? It was Sinn Féin's Stormont leader Michelle O'Neill when she was Minister of Health.

Yesterday it was revealed that the education system in Northern Ireland will have a £350 million funding gap by 2019-20. Almost 400 schools will be in budget deficit this year, which is the highest number ever. The education budget has fallen by 10% in real terms since 2010. Which party held the education portfolio at Stormont before the collapse of the Executive? It was the DUP.

The large majority of those who vote do so for four parties, namely, the DUP, Sinn Féin, the SDLP and the UUP. There is nothing inevitable about this. When most voters go to the ballot box they can see no credible alternative on offer and vote for their side against the other side, often reluctantly. At present, there is no large cross-community party which opposes sectarianism, opposes austerity and supports the right to choose. The creation of such a party is vital. When one existed in the 1960s, it drew 100,000 votes and there is no reason this level of support could not be built again.

There are good reasons to hope for a better future. In the 1980s and 1990s, tens of thousands of working people joined trade union-organised rallies against sectarian massacres. Those rallies demonstrated that there was an overwhelming mood for peace, for the unity of working people and for a better future free from poverty and unemployment.

These hopes of the early years of the peace process have been dashed. We live in more peaceful times but it is a relative peace and low-level violence continues. Sectarian division has hardened in many ways. The hope for a peace dividend has not materialised. Despite all of this, the vast majority of people are opposed to any return to conflict. The divisions that dominate the news are one side of the picture only. Every day, genuine labour, trade union and socialist activists stand together on an anti-sectarian basis, whatever their background. Health campaigners are currently linking up across the North to bring local campaigns together. The unity of working people, when they stand up to protect their services, is organic. It is this unity which points the way to the future.

Trade unions organise more than 220,000 workers in Northern Ireland, both Catholic and Protestant. Those trade unionists are linked with trade unionists in the South through the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. They stand in solidarity with their fellow trade unionists in England, Scotland and Wales as currently seen with the dispute at the Royal Mail. It is only the trade unions, genuine left and socialist activists who can defend working people in the difficult period ahead.

Solidarity supports those who are endeavouring to build working class unity in Northern Ireland. Solidarity will offer whatever assistance it can to campaigners who seek to defend the NHS and education. We stand together with those who are fighting for a woman's right to choose, and Solidarity supports trade union and other activists who are endeavouring to build a new mass cross-community, anti-sectarian left party which can provide a real alternative at the ballot box.

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