Defending the interests of working people

The caption under a photograph on page seven of yesterday’s edition (Dec 2) described me as having “defended Labour’s role in cuts”. Any reading of the accompanying article by Juno McEnroe would demonstrate that I did exactly the opposite.

Rather than defending cuts, I was arguing that “until the day that Labour, perhaps along with others on the Left can become the majority in a government, we believe that it and, if the circumstances arise, others on the serious Left must be prepared to go into government with the Centre Right parties to defend the interests of working people and civil society as far as possible”.

Your report quoted directly from the script which was circulated to the media and which stated that “on any reading of the Fine Gael party’s election manifesto the cuts imposed would now be somewhere between €1.6bn and €2bn more than those which have been inflicted to date.