Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Though it is not acknowledged often enough, there is another 32-county party in this country. It is called People Before Profit. We have an Assembly Member for West Belfast and a number of councillors in Belfast and Derry. Interestingly, in the recent elections our vote in West Belfast went up by 5%, rising from 10% to 16%. By any standard, this is a significant improvement for a party that organises not on green or orange lines but on the basis of socialist politics and on uniting Catholic and Protestant working-class people in their common interests. One of the key issues that came up when I was canvassing in West Belfast was the health service. Indeed, this issue dominated. It echoes the circumstances down here. Why are nurses in the North and other health workers on strike? It is because people are waiting up to two years for important operations and because they are put on trolleys in accident and emergency wards. Also, actions of the Tories, sanctioned or not challenged by the two major parties in the North, mean health workers in the National Health Service in the North earn less than their counterparts in the rest of the United Kingdom. Would it not be very reasonable to say the restoration of the Assembly should be conditional on increased investment to address the crisis in the National Health Service and on a clear commitment to pay parity between nurses and other health workers in the North and their counterparts in the rest of the United Kingdom? Pay parity is a major issue affecting people across sectarian lines in the North.

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