Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

We have a very impressive display of workers' power in Britain today, the largest co-ordinated strike action in more than a decade, with teachers, train drivers, civil servants and many others withdrawing their labour. In the North, UCU members working in higher education are on strike, a strike that is about pay and the investment in the future of higher education. The workers have realised that serious and militant strike action is the way to go after years of a series of one-day, intermittent strike action. In the North, that comes after a wave of strike action involving hospital staff and a coming wave including teachers, firefighters and others.

Is the Taoiseach concerned that workers in the South may look to the North, and across the water, and say that they need to use their power here too, they need to prepare the ground to take on the idea of a 24-hour general strike, and they need pay increases that are at least in line with inflation to stop people losing out and their incomes being reduced?

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