Change was in the air on Saturday last as 80,000 people took to the streets of Dublin demanding the abolition of the hated water tax.
Right 2 Water campaigners including Deputy Seamus Healy, from all over County Tipperary joined the pre-election demonstration organised by Right 2 Water, Right 2 Change.
The huge turnout on the last Saturday before the election sent a clear message to the outgoing government that public anger at water charges remains unabated and will be reflected in the ballot boxes on Friday.
But it was always clear that the hundreds of thousands who have taken to the streets of our towns and cities over the past eighteen months have not just been protesting against water charges.
Water charges have been the tipping point for many people – but they are just one manifestation of the austerity policies pursued by the outgoing Government and the previous Fianna Fail/Green coalition.
On Saturday we also heard from two homeless women who took to the stage with their children to tell the crowd what it’s like to be denied one of the most basic rights in a civilised society: a secure home in which to raise a family.
So far, 106 candidates including Deputy Seamus Healy have signed up to the Right2Change Policy Principles – the principles which would underpin a new progressive Government.
This coming Friday, February 26th, people in every constituency will have a chance to vote for one or more ‘Candidates4Change’. Another Ireland will become possible on polling day”,
Seamus Healy TD
22/02/2016
087 2802199
Deputy Seamus Healy has condemned Tánaiste Joan Burton for one of the meanest cuts yet.
Having insulted pensioners with a miserly €3 per week budget increase she now has instructed officers of the Department of Social Welfare to cut that €3 from sick pensioners who require a Special Diet.
Hard to believe – yes, Well I am attaching a copy of the cut notification received by a 90 year old pensioner (personal details are excluded).
This is one of the many cuts targeting pensioners such as abolition of telephone allowance, reduction in household benefits package, reduction in fuel allowance, increased prescription charges, abolition of the bereavement grant and the list goes on.
Deputy Healy has called on Labour Party Tánaiste Joan Burton T.D. to reverse this cut immediately.
Seamus Healy TD
087 2802199
A deliberate Government Policy is ripping off Irish Mortgage Holders and Small Businesses.
According a survey of interest rates published by the Central Bank, variable rate new housing loans averaged 4.13%
Typical Eurozone mortgage rates are 2.1%-roughly half the Irish rate.
And interest rates for small businesses have come down everywhere in Europe except Ireland, according to retired governor of the Central Bank, Patrick Honohan .
The excuse given by Government and Central Bank is that they “can’t intervene in the market”
This is pure deception.
They are intervening in the market with the effect of keeping rates artificially high! There is effectively no competition in the Irish Market
Fine Gael Finance Minister Michael Noonan has designated Bank of Ireland(BoI) and Allied Irish Bank (AIB) as “Pillar Banks”. This means that they cannot be allowed to fail and will be subsidised or bailed out again by government if necessary. This has frightened off foreign competition-Danske Bank and Bank of Scotland have already left.
This allows AIB, BoI and Permanent TSB to run a cosy cartel at the expense of householders and small businesses.
The Government is the owner of AIB, Permanent TSB and EBS as it holds the vast majority of the shares. It can call special general meetings of shareholders at any time and it can instruct the banks to lower the rates. All other banks would then have to lower their rates to stay in business
But the government will not do this. Instead it hypocritically calls in the banks from time to time “to express its concern” at the high rates.
The high interest rates are, in effect, a penal tax imposed by the government on householders and small businesses.
The balance sheets of the banks are being repaired by this tax. The banks are being “fattened up for privatisation”. When sold off the money will be used to pay back loans borrowed to bail out huge investors in the banks before they crashed.
There will be no compensation by government for small investors such as investors of pension and redundancy lump sums who were wiped out in the crash of bank shares.
Labour and Fine Gael are deliberately running this scam on the public. Fianna Fáil are just moaning about it rather than exposing this huge scandal.
Candidates of these parties should be forced to explain and to commit to ending the scam
THIS INJUSTICE TO MORTGAGE HOLDERS AND SMALL BUSINESSES MUST END.
Seamus Healy TD
Tel: 087 2802199
15/2/2016
Mattie McGrath TD offers to support a Fine Gael Government in the next Dáil.
Michael Noonan, chief architect of the cuts has approached him!
In his announcement Mattie McGrath T.D. did not set out any of the issues below as “red line issues” for his support
We must therefore assume that Mattie is prepared to support the following policies to which Fine Gael are committed to implement in the next government:
• Water Charges to be continued.
• Family Home Tax to be continued.
• Exorbitant Interest Rates on Mortgage Holders-Twice the European Average, to be continued.
• Eviction of Tipperary families from their homes by government owned banks to be continued.
• Michael Noonan has recently refused the request of Seamus Healy TD, in a parliamentary question in the Dáil, to stop AIB, Permanent TSB and ESB, in which the Minister holds the huge majority of the shares, seeking the eviction of Tipperary families through the courts.
Mattie McGrath has recently expressed concern that home repossessions by banks are pushing people towards suicide. This is a concern that I share.
In the Dáil, just before the dissolution, I appealed to Minister Michael Noonan to order the banks he owns to withdraw repossession proceedings in light of the extreme housing emergency which exists.
The Minister refused.
This means that the government has given the green light to the banks they own, to continue to evict families including up to 100 Tipperary families who are up for repossession before the County Tipperary circuit courts.
Mattie McGrath should clarify his position to the people of Tipperary urgently.
He cannot continue to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds
Seamus Healy TD 087 2802199
The most consistent and angriest complaint on the door steps is of broken promises and the resultant targeting of those on low and middle incomes for cuts and new taxes.
When considering promises and announcements by Labour and Fine Gael in this General Election Campaign, voters are considering what happened to the promises they made in the last General Election Campaign.
The Public have been pointing out to me the litany of broken promises which include:
St. Michael’s Unit.
At a local level, Labour Leader Eamonn Gilmore, promised to protect South Tipperary General Hospital. Labour Minister, Kathleen Lynch, in government, closed down St Michael’s Psychiatric Unit in Clonmel and transferred it to Kilkenny.
Hospital Trolleys
We will “end the scandal of Hospital Trolleys” said Enda Kenny. The result is Trolley Chaos in our Emergency Departments, the closure of 2,000 hospital beds, the loss of 11,000 health staff and the loss of 2 million home help hours.
Water Tax
Through the 2011 General Election TESCO AD and in its election manifesto, The Labour Party promised to prevent the introduction of domestic water tax. In government they agreed to introduce this tax and Minister Alan Kelly is now implementing it.
Child Benefit
In the 2011 General Election Tesco AD, the Labour Party said it would prevent Fine Gael reducing Child Benefit. Labour leader Joan Burton, in government, did the opposite and cut Child Benefit.
FAMILY HOME TAX
Fine Gael Leader, Enda Kenny, said “ It Is Morally Wrong, Unjust and Unfair to Tax a Person’s Home”. But in Government, he introduced this unfair tax.
Lone Parents
Speaking in the Dáil on 18th April 2012, Minister Joan Burton said she would only proceed with plans to reform the One Parent Family Payment by 2014/15 if she got a “credible and bankable commitment” by the time of Budget 2013 that the Irish Government would put in place “a system of safe, affordable and accessible child care, similar to what is found in the Scandinavian countries to whose systems of social protection we aspire”.
Minister Burton went ahead with the changes without any such child care system being in place.
Crime
Enda Kenny promised to increase the Garda Force by 2,000 Gardaí. The result was 2,000 less Gardaí, 130 Garda Station closed and increased levels of rural crime.
Heating Allowances
Then there was the Labour Manifesto promise to invest in ending fuel poverty which causes unnecessary deaths of older people every winter. “However, Labour will also take immediate action to alleviate the risk of fuel poverty in the short term by reinvesting €40 million from the
carbon tax to alleviate fuel poverty, and by developing a national fuel
poverty strategy as set out in Labour’s Fuel Poverty and Energy
Conservation Bill.” Labour Party Manifesto 2011.
Instead, the heating allowances were cut by the Labour Leader
The Public are fed up of broken promises. They are taking the recent spate of promises from all the political parties with a large dose of salt.
The Door Steps say Don’t Believe Them and Don’t Let It Happen Again!
Seamus Healy TD
Tel : 087-2802199
08/02/2016
Statement by Seamus Healy TD 0872802199
Banking Inquiry Confirms that Irish Super-Rich and Entire Irish Elite Are Responsible for Greatest Crisis in the Financial History of the State
IRELAND HAS NO ECONOMIC SOVEREIGNTY TO STAND UP TO EU BULLYING
The report of the Banking Inquiry and the published evidence shows that the greed of the Irish rich combined with the compliance of their elites are responsible for untold misery due to the financial crash including mass unemployment, emigration, negative equity, loss of homes and life savings. It also showed that the policies of successive governments have left Ireland with no economic sovereignty to protect our citizens.
A new left government completely excluding Fianna Fail and Fine Gael is necessary to tackle this situation. New regulations and procedures are not enough. The rich and their elite hangers on will not implement any regulations if it does not suit the rich.
The government, central bank and the regulator had plenty powers and advance information to enable them to intervene to prevent the crash but failed to use them.
In his evidence to the Inquiry, the then Deputy Governor of the Central Bank Tom O’Connell, put it in a nutshell: ““It’s sometimes said that nobody seemed to know that a property boom or bubble was developing. That’s … that is completely incorrect in my view ——Ireland’s banking and economic crash should never have happened, should never have been allowed to happen, with all the consequences of huge increases in unemployment, rising emigration, enormous debt, suicides, etc., that we have seen.-the liquidity pumped out into the banks was €140 billion, you know, with the … both from the Central Bank and the ECB. I mean, once you spell that out, that’s €140,000 million – there are 12 digits in that.——- One can only surmise that, as Professor Alan Ahearne has said here to your committee, too many people were benefitting from the boom time for prudence avoidance … prudent avoidance measures to have been taken. ”
TOM O’Connell is right!
The Inquiry found that the almost universal adoption of the “soft-landing theory” without any substantial testing or challenge“must be regarded as a key failing for the government, the Central Bank and the Department of Finance”-Ciaran Lynch TD Chair. The Economic and Social Research Institute, charged with advising citizens and government on economic matters, and employing numerous professors of economics, also predicted a soft landing.
There was significant overlap in membership between the board of the Central Bank and the governing council of the ESRI. Irish elite insiders from business, trade union leadership, academia and the business professions dominated both boards.
Citizens should use the election to clear out the representatives of the super- rich from government before the cause another similar crash
Seamus Healy TD
David Begg Should Withdraw From the Pensions Authority following the conclusions of the report of The Banking Inquiry.
Tánaiste Burton should Now resign.
The banking inquiry has come down hard against the Regulator and the Central Bank—RTE NEWS.
http://www.rte.ie/news/2016/0122/762192-banking-inquiry-report/
The Banking Inquiry has found that both the Financial Regulator and Central Bank had sufficient powers to intervene in the banking sector to protect the financial stability of the State, but neither intervened decisively according to a Report on RTE News.
In my contribution to the recent “no confidence” debate in the Dáil, I said on the record of the Dáil: “I believe that Mr. Begg, who signed off on the financial stability reports of the Central Bank during those years (2003-2007) is particularly unsuited to and not qualified for this particular appointment.”
Mr. Begg was a member of the board of the Central Bank from 2003 to 2007. This board, including Mr Begg, allowed the financial system as a whole to borrow 50% of GDP, a level of borrowing that was hitherto unprecedented according to Former Governor of the Central Bank, Patrick Honohan.
The board of the Central Bank failed in its primary duty to protect the value of shares owned by tens of thousands of citizens.
On the basis of the Financial Stability Reports to which David Begg assented, financial consultants advised pensioners, redundant workers and those providing for retirement generally to buy shares in financial institutions including banks in Ireland. These citizens have lost their life savings.
The Pensions Authority is also tasked with protecting the pension contributions of citizens. David Begg was a member of the Board of the Central Bank for fourteen years.
I believe that anybody who was a member of that board should be disqualified from any state authority exercising oversight over financial entities including pension funds.
Seamus Healy TD 087-2802199
