Out-of-touch unions are crippling our economy

SOME 500,000 people are unemployed and with almost no prospect of getting family-sustaining jobs in the near future.

Our banks have broken our country and our Minister for Finance has said we may not be able to survive as an economic entity. Meanwhile, as if living in a parallel universe enjoying totally different economic realities, a powerful group that lives out of the public purse — the nursing unions — has urged members not to work for the new lower rates, resulting in some cancellations of services. Could someone from the nurses union, who no doubt believe that they are the inheritors of James Connolly’s struggle for national sovereignty, help me understand how their behaviour today is helping our country to recover as it lies in intensive care on an ECB life support machine?

The trade union movement is predominantly made up of public service employees who are paid for by a radically contracted tax base, but more so by borrowed money which we can’t pay back.