Léargas

We are on the eve of a momentous year. This time a hundred years ago republican men and women were planning the overthrow of the British Empire in Ireland. REVOLUTION 1916: Molly O Reilly and the Rising For those of you who have never heard her name Molly O’Reilly was a young teenage girl who marched with the Citizen Army to the GPO on Easter Monday April 24 th 1916. Molly was born around 1900 in Gardner Street in Dublin. At the age of 11 she joined Clann na nGaedheal the republican girl scouts movement. Two years later she was so appalled by the living conditions in the Dublin tenements that she volunteered to support the workers and their families during the Lock-out. At the age of 13 Molly helped organise a soup kitchen in Liberty Hall. And it was there one week before the Easter Rising she raised the Irish flag (the gold harp on green) for James Connolly. Molly was hugely influenced by Connolly and was an active member of the Citizen Army. In July ...

I sat through the RTE Prime Time programme last Monday night amazed at how far greed will drive individuals to engage in corrupt practices. The southern state has a long history of political corruption. Some Councillors, TDs, government Ministers and Taoisigh have exploited their political positions for self-gain. Planning processes have been particularly favoured by them. Politicians received kick-backs for the ‘right’ decisions in planning processes that advantaged some developers. Land that was bought cheap suddenly skyrocketed in value when it was zoned for housing and business use. The ‘brown envelope’ culture was endemic in political life in the south for decades. It has been a key feature of a long-running and toxic political culture that also gave us the abuses of power that we have seen in the banks, in the health service, in charities and in church and State-run institutions. It is part and parcel of a culture of golden circles and insiders which has so tarnished...

  Last Friday Sinn Féin unveiled a policy document to address the housing crisis that has been created by successive Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour governments. The policy will deliver 100,000 new social and affordable homes, and security and certainty for tenants, and also support homeowners and buyers. Increasing homelessness, soaring rents, never-ending housing waiting lists, and poor quality houses and apartments, are the legacy of Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, and the Labour party. Housing across the 26 counties is in crisis as successive governments have handed responsibility for housing to landlords, developers and bankers. Profit has been put before the needs of citizens and we are all paying the price. Days before the launch of the Sinn Féin plan F ine Gael and Labour voted down a Sinn Féin Bill in the Dáil - " Rent Certainty and Prevention of Homelessness Bill". The proposals contained in the Bill were all called for by those in the front line dealin...

During the recent negotiations to secure the future of the political institutions the British government successfully thwarted efforts to put in place the legacy elements of last December’s Stormont House Agreement. This was deeply disappointing for victims and their families. The British government’s refusal to honour last year’s agreement on full disclosure and to employ the pretext of ‘national security’ to deny victims access to state information, follows a familiar pattern. For four decades successive British government’s and their security, intelligence and policing agencies have worked to cover-up the systematic use of collusion, shoot-to-kill actions, and torture. The determination and commitment of families and of a small number of dedicated victim’s support organisations and human rights lawyers have frustrated their efforts. The Bloody Sunday families; the family of Pat Finucane and the Pat Finucane Centre; Relatives for Justice; Justice for the Forgotten; the Ballym...

  Climate change is one of the defining challenges facing our society today. Consequently next Monday’s climate change conference in Paris, which will see representatives from almost 200 states across the globe participate, is of huge importance. The conference will run from November 30 th to December 11 th . Far from focussing only on environmental issues around stabilising the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere - it is in reality a critical political and security negotiation about the future – including the island of Ireland. I believe that the Paris conference has to be about citizen’s fundamental human rights over the vested interests of big business or individual States.  Climate change has often seemed for many, a scientific debate and phenomena far removed from most ordinary people's everyday reality – until now. Several weeks ago representatives from the Pacific islands met in Fiji. They warned of the danger of large parts of their landmass disappe...

        Thursday saw the launch of the Free Arnaldo Otegi and Bring Basque Political Prisoners Home campaign in Ireland. The event took place in Leinster House and was jointly sponsored by myself; Maureen O’Sullivan TD; Finian McGrath TD and involved speakers including Robert Ballagh, Artist and social justice campaigner; Urko Airtza, Basque Senator and human rights lawyer; Pablo Vicente, and Fermin Muguruza, famous Basque musician. On my own behalf and on behalf of Sinn Féin, I extended solidarity greetings from the event to Arnaldo. I also warmly welcomed today's initiative and pledged Sinn Féin's full support. Sinn Féin and the Basque people have a long history of solidarity in struggle. I and other Sinn Féin leaders have been active in travelling to the Basque country in support of efforts to achieve a peace process and agreement. Regrettably the dialogue for peace has been largely one-sided. The people of the Basque country, represen...

The agreement reached at Stormont on Tuesday is far from perfect. But it is the best that was possible at this time. It is the culmination of over three months of intense and difficult negotiations that arose following a series of crisis in the political process. Last year’s Stormont House Agreement was a genuine effort to secure a deal that would protect the most vulnerable in society, to safeguard the rights and entitlements of citizens, to grow the economy and to enhance the working of the institutions. But resistance to change, which is particularly strong within elements of unreconstructed unionism and the British security system, and the ideological commitment of the British Tory party to austerity saw the agreement come under immediate pressure. The contrived political crisis by the Ulster Unionist Party following the murders of Jock Davison and Kevin McGuigan in Belfast led to the virtual collapse of the institutions. Martin McGuinness and others in our negotiatin...