Another disgraceful milestone has been reached under the brutal regime of FG/Labour and ‘troika’- sponsored austerity. According to a report titled ‘Constructing a Food Poverty Indicator for Ireland’, commissioned by the Department of Social Protection and carried out by Safefood, more than 450,000 people (or 10% of the population) suffered food poverty in 2010.

Movements against the budget need to come together to shatter this weak government. This week protests by home help workers left the Fine Gael Labour government shaken. During the Dail debate on the savage cuts to home help hours you would swear the government TDs were against the cuts. One after another they got up and stated their opposition to the cuts. but hang on one second- isn't it James Reilly, a member of their government, that cut the hours by 500,000 earlier in the year? Where was their opposition to the cuts then?

In a statement this afternoon, Richard Boyd Barrett TD, condemned the Taoiseach for deliberately misleading the Dail during Leaders Questions. In response to a question about the plight of Home Help workers and those who rely on their services, the Taoiseach, rather than answering the question, repeated a false claim made by Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore in the Dail last week, relating to disability cuts in the Dun Laoghaire area.

People Before Profit Stage Successful Conference. One hundred activists from the People Before Profit Alliance met at a recent national conference to develop strategy.The national meeting was a follow up from a series of re-launch meetings that have been occurring around the country which have been well attended.

Richard Boyd Barrett TD kicked off the discussion with an overview on the fight against austerity.

The opening of the Marie Stopes International (MSI) Sexual Health Centre must be welcomed by all who care about women's rights. North and South, it has been clear for decades now that a woman whose life or health is seriously at risk because of pregnancy cannot be sure of getting an abortion, if that's what she wants.

There has been much talk this week about private schools and whether we, the working class, should continue to fund them. There has been unsurprisingly little talk about the paltry levels of tax some the wealthiest parents in the land are paying, or about how some of the poorest schools are being devastated by cuts.

The Welfare Reform Bill before the Northern Ireland Assembly will drag more families into poverty and mean those dependent on benefits will increasingly struggle to survive. Despite Sinn Fein’s claims to protect the vulnerable it will be low income families with children that take the hardest hit.

How this little country really works. Finance Minister, Michael Noonan, has gone against an EU Commission proposal to impose a small tax on financial speculation. The proposal was for a 0.1 tax levy on share and bond transactions and an even smaller 0.01 percent tax on derivatives.

This tiny tax could have raised significant money for the hard pressed Irish exchequer. The EU estimated that €500 million could be garnered from this tax – the equivalent of what the government intends to raise with the property tax next year.

There is now just one week left to go until the TUC’s demonstrations in Belfast, London and the STUC’s in Glasgow on Saturday 20 October.

Up and down Britain and in Northern Ireland, activists are leafleting, holding mobilising rallies and organising transport.

As the Tories launch a new raft of attacks at their conference this week, the demonstration is a vital part of stepping up the resistance to the cuts.

In a statement today, Richard Boyd Barret TD for People Before Profit-ULA, said the recently revealed links between the Department of Finance and the Clearing House Group and the presence of a former senior executive in US multi-national Sodexo as an advisor to Minister Reilly’s department, demonstrates that the government is “nothing more than a puppet for multi-nationals and corporate interests”.