Sinn Féin: The people of Ireland have paid enough

Sinn Féin has delivered a message to Government saying the Irish people have had enough of cuts.

Speaking today at the party's Ard Fheis in Belfast, Sinn Féin Vice President Mary Lou McDonald said the Government must remember the plight of ordinar people when conducting its Comprehensive Expenditure Review.

“Minister, look to the top – cut at the top, because that’s where you can cut,” she told delegates.

“The ordinary people have taken enough.”

Donegal TD Pearse Doherty said that working people had “paid enough” to ease the country's financial crisis, calling on the Fine Gael/Labour coalition to shift the burden.

Mr Doherty said the EU/IMF bailout deal was crippling the south’s economy and its society.

“Having promised to renegotiate this bad deal, the new Fine Gael-Labour government have acquiesced to the spirit and letter of the failed Fianna Fáil policy,” he said.

“In exchange for EU and IMF loans our so-called partners in Europe are forcing us to starve our domestic economy of the stimulus it needs while pouring billions of tax-payers’ monies into toxic banks.

“Only a few short weeks ago Fine Gael and Labour threw another €16.4bn of public money into the banks. Yet in the same month they were promising up to €4bn in cuts and tax hikes in the December budget.

“For those of you struggling with lower wages, rising prices and the unjust Universal Social Charge, the Government is saying that you must pay more; they are saying that you must now pay a new household charge, water charges, property taxes and increased income tax bills.

“Sinn Féin says that you have paid enough. There is a better way.”

He called for investment in jobs and services and called for the “banks and bondholders to shoulder their fair share of the burden they helped create”.

He also said an independent distressed mortgage resolution body should help families in fear of losing their homes.

Mr Doherty added: “Our choice would be to change direction and rebuild our economy in a way that puts people first.”

Party president Gerry Adams is due to deliver his keynote speech later tonight in which he is expected to suggest that the party wants to contest the Presidential election.

Stormont Agriculture Minister Michelle Gildernew is believed to be the likely candidate.

Last night Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness announced he wants his party to lead an all-Ireland debate on building a new republic ahead of the centenary of the Easter Rising of 1916.

Mr McGuinness said that republicans had to continue to work towards Irish unity and he called for a wider debate on the issue.

He added: “I see unionists as brothers and sisters to be loved and cherished as we continue to develop a genuine process of reconciliation on our journey to the New Republic.”

His call for republicans to reach out to unionists followed the historic decision of Protestant Clergyman Rev David Latimer to address the Sinn Féin conference on last night.

Rev Latimer, the first Northern Protestant church figure to speak at a Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, praised Mr McGuinness’s work for peace and called for an end to religious division.