The country’s largest anti-water charges group, Right2Water, will launch its general election policy platform today in a bid to steal votes from the Labour party.
Left-wing politicians, community groups and members of a number of number of trade unions are among the 30,000 people expected to march on the streets of Dublin this afternoon to protest against water charges and encourage others to join the mass boycott.
Under the new umbrella group of Right2Change, the movement, which is made up of trade unions, will launch a 26-page document that includes proposals on education, health, housing, debt justice, democratic reform and the minimum wage.
Two weekend conferences have been held to develop the policy platform and 160 submissions have been received from the public. The four unions behind Right2Water are Unite, Mandate, the civil service union CPSU and the technical and engineering union TEEU. SIPTU, the biggest union in the country, is affiliated to the Labour party and is not a member.
The group stressed it would not register as a political party or run candidates, but was seeking to embed a series of core principles among left-wing parties and politicians. It is planning to embark on a roadshow, visiting 26 locations across the county, in a bid to get feedback from voters and candidates who may decide to use their policies as part of their election campaign.
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The most recent Behaviour & Attitudes poll for The Sunday Times, conducted in July, put support levels for independents and others at 32 per cent.
Only 43 per cent of households had paid their water bills to date.
John Douglas, Mandate general secretary and Right2Water co-ordinator, said the document would allow parties and independent politicians on the left to present a unified set of proposals to voters. “It’s a broad set of core principles,” he said.
“We are basically trying to build a wide-ranging alliance for a different vision of what Ireland could look like.
“It means you will have a large group of people running for the Dail that will all be starting from the same point. There may be some differences, but in general they would have the same approach and sense of purpose.”
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With the Labour party at 8 per cent in the polls, the movement could damage the junior coalition partner’s prospects at the next election and its hopes of returning to power with Fine Gael. Its key proposal is to abolish Irish Water and to hold a referendum to enshrine the right to water in the constitution.
It would also hold a national ballot to ensure there is a right to housing for all citizens. This would effectively make it against the law for anyone to be homeless or left without the option of a home. In the short-term, rent controls would be introduced and in the long-term, the introduction of a national home-building project and income-related rental accommodation would be recommended.
The plan outlines the right to “a job and decent work” and would make the government the “employer of last resort”. The work guarantee scheme would mean that anyone without a job would be given a productive activity by the state. It would also instigate full collective bargaining rights, allowing unions to negotiate terms and conditions of employment on behalf of all workers.
The group would legislate for overtime, pay for working unsocial hours and an increase in the minimum wage from €8.65 to the living wage of €11.50. The government has already committed to increasing the minimum wage to €9.15 per hour.
Stronger family support and state-funded childcare measures feature in the plan. Its health proposals include ending tax incentives for private hospitals and providing free primary health and dental care for all citizens.
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The right to debt justice would build alliances with progressive citizen-led movements across Europe such as Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain.
The group would establish a committee on public debt that would carry out an audit to identify “odious, illegal, illegitimate and unsustainable” elements of the country’s current debt burden.
All school fees, including voluntary contributions at primary and secondary schools and third-level fees, would be abolished. Money from the state’s 12.5 per cent corporation tax rate would be ring-fenced to fund the third-level sector.
Cuts to special needs assistants in schools would be reversed and the pupil teacher ratio would be lowered, which currently stands at 24 pupils a class, in comparison to an average of 20 pupils in the EU.
To reform the Dail, Right2Water wants the whip system to be relaxed to ensure that TDs are allowed to vote with their conscience. They would give the public the right to recall elected members of parliament before the end of term in order to oversee politicians and their work.