The alternative iscoming into view
This is best encapsulated in the Hanly report on hospital services, the rowing back on free third-level education and the proposals to privatise everything that moves in the public sector.
What is required is an alternative based on a social democratic model, which will return us to the northern European belief in public investment as a vital component of a civilised society while also ensuring a vibrant economy based on fairness as well as enterprise.
Labour party leader Pat Rabbitte has called this the Fair Society, and it was clear from the reaction I received on the doorsteps that it has touched a chord with the electorate.
What the electorate do not want, I believe, is an alternative based on better management of the same centre-right, mean-spirited economy.
The challenge for the developing alternative is a policy platform which will renew the health service based on Labour’s radical policy alternative to the present mess.
We should return to investment in education, based on the principle of free and universal access to it all levels and renew the public sector through the delivery of a first-class service to us the citizens as consumers.
As a newly-elected councillor, I believe we must renew local government, by empowering local communities to take charge of their own lives again. Any sense of offering tweedledum as an alternative to tweedledee will deservedly fail.
Cllr Seán Ó hArgáin,
14, College Square,
Kilkenny.
