Election agenda for equality

In a year's time the Irish electorate will be invited to sign up to one of a few packages of parties, candidates and policies for the following five years. This is called "democracy", permitting the people to determine their future and the course of their country in a process largely devoid of meaning.

Largely devoid of meaning because the idea of consulting the electorate in such a crude manner, and doing it so occasionally, makes meaningful participation in the decision-making of the nation a charade.

But we must work with what we have got and with a year to go before the hustings, a debate on what the issues might be opportune.

If the corporate media and the political establishment have their way, the issues will centre on the management of the economy, the crisis in A&E units, the control of criminality, or what they see as criminality, and road traffic. And on all of these issues there is no difference of any significance between any of the establishment parties, by which we mean Fianna Fáil, the PDs, Fine Gael and Labour.

Management of the economy boils down essentially to a commitment not to increase direct taxes under any circumstances. We no longer have control over interest rates, we have to abide by EU structures on borrowings, Fianna Fáil and the PDs think it is OK to splurge public monies to buy the election and the other parties are afraid of being caught on the wrong side of popular expenditure dodges, so no difference here. One side claims it would be better than the other side in the management of the economy but there is no policy difference of any kind between any of the established parties.

On the A&E issue there is consensus that this is THE crisis in health welfare, along with waiting lists. The huge disparities in health welfare between those in the higher occupational classes as compared with those in the lower classes is of no interest or concern to the parties. Sort out A&E and waiting lists and all is fine, even though poor people die prematurely of all the major diseases at a rate several times the incidence of premature death for rich people.

Crime, the problem is burglary and larceny. Of course there are headlines and sound bites over the blip in the murder rate but the main concern and focus is on these lesser crimes. No apparent concern for the massive crimes related to insider trading on the stock exchange – in the face of clear-cut evidence of this on a huge scale in the recent past the State has done precisely nothing. No apparent concern with how people who steal millions from the State in tax fraud escape criminal sanction except in the rarest of instances. And above all no strategy, no policy, no initiative on the incidence of the most prevalent criminality: sex crime.

As for traffic, what do we expect? We build a transport system almost entirely around private transport and when more and more people can afford more and more cars we wonder why there is chaos, as well as slaughter on the roads, massive injury, pollution and the despoliation of the countryside as more and more roadways are driven through.

But is one of the establishment parties proposing to do the obvious: institute policies that incentivise people to move from private to public transport, a public transport system that is efficient, comprehensive and reliable? (The recent strike that has closed down the railways is an unfortunate advertisement for the potentialities of public transport, it has to be conceded.)

We would propose an alternative agenda, which addresses the issues of inequalities, the regeneration of disadvantaged areas, the problems of mental health and suicide, the disadvantage in education and health, housing, our solemn commitment on Overseas Development Aid, the use of our airfields and airspace for all foreign military flights, as was formerly official policy, the issue of sexual abuse and other sexual crimes, and road deaths.

Vincent Browne