Labour Party Ministers are attacking the vulnerable in society. The most shocking case is the cuts in special needs education that is being instigated by Ruairi Quinn.

Despite a rise in the school going population, Quinn is removing 227 Special Needs Assistant posts. These help children who have particular needs within mainstream classes.

Nearly one thousand people gathered at the Dail on Wednesday to voice their opposition to the government and also to support a Technical Group motion calling for the reversal of these cuts.

The protest was loud and lively but, unfortunately, a number of right wing deputies – Stephen Donnelly and Mattie McGrath – were given a platform to voice their ‘concerns’. These individuals support cuts in public spending and the first two are avowed neo-liberals. But like many right-wing politicians they combine a hard ideological stance with support for particular cases. It was a pity they got the chance to parade their opportunism.

A smaller protest instigated by the Enough! campaign had a much clearer left wing focus as it linked the issue to opposition to the IMF-EU bail out.

The other Labour Minister to take a lead on cuts backs is Joan Burton. Burton originally belonged to a left wing ginger group inside the Labour Party but she has now embraced the war on the poor.

This week she cut the telephone allowance for social welfare recipients by €3.69 a month.

She also slashed the number of free units of electricity under the electricity allowance scheme from 2400 to 1800 units despite the fact that Ireland already suffers from high rates of fuel poverty

She also cut the annual gas allowance from €489 to €393 at precisely the time when Bord Gais intimated that its prices could rise by 30%.

Condemning these measures, Eamon Timmins from Age Action Ireland pointed out that ‘Each winter in Ireland, we have up to 2,000 excess winter deaths, many of whom are older people dying of cold-related-illness’.

Yet despite the increased risk of hypothermia, a Labour Party minister is telling the poor to suffer more. Let’s hope we do not have a hard winter.

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