Vision and Challenges
1.) Ireland approaches the 21st Century in a spirit of high expectation. Values and vision are crucial. Never before have there been so many grounds for optimism. Never before have we had so much to build on.
2.) Building hope and confidence for the future we face requires a mix – a mix of values, of vision, and of practical policies. This document seeks to express that balance.
3.) Our key priorities for the start of the 21st Century are these:
4.) Side by side with these over-riding objectives, building hope and confidence depends too on the right approach to:
These, and many other topics, are dealt with in this document.
5.) We also have unfinished business and further reforms arising from the government "Programme for Renewal" to carry through to completion.
6.) Labour has been at the heart of the changes which are making this a better, more tolerant and more prosperous Ireland.
7.) For the past four years, Labour has been in the forefront of growth, development and change in Irish society and Irish politics.
8.) A great deal of that change has been fundamental, and it has led to higher standards of living and a much better quality of life. For the hard pressed PAYE taxpayer. For rural communities. For those struggling to make ends meet.
9.) For women in employment and working in the home. For families with children in or entering third level education. For those starting and developing small businesses. For people locked into broken marriages. For the returned emigrants who have found jobs at home. For thousands of people on long hospital waiting lists. For people coping with, and seeking to overcome, handicap or disability.
10.) Never have so many real jobs been created in the economy in such a short period. Never has so much social legislation and social reform been achieved. Never has the self-confidence and energy of our young people been more in evidence.
11.) Never has Ireland’s position and role in Europe and the world been more strongly articulated and asserted.
12.) But major challenges still remain to be faced – in our society, in our cities, in our local communities, towns and villages.
13.) Then, there have been setback. The paramilitary cease-fires of autumn 1994 were openly broken by the IRA at Canary Wharf in February 1996. Seventeen months of hope and joy at the stopping of killings where shattered, at least temporarily.
14.) Labour, with all parties in the Daíl and many of the parties in the North who worked in the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, had to pick up the pieces, and continue the struggle for peace against a more difficult and tense background.
15.) Northern Ireland, and the achievement of peace, remains our greatest priority. Labour has played a significant role in the last four years in the progress towards an inclusive settlement based on consent.
16.) We have participated in the negotiations on the Downing Street Declaration and the Joint Framework Documents, and we are totally committed to the principles they contain. Labour has also played a significant part in the negotiations that led to the commencement of all-Party talks in Northern Ireland, and in the ground rules that underpin them. We commit ourselves to giving those talks renewed urgency and momentum.
17.) Inclusion and consent will remain the hallmarks of our policy. We have stressed, again and again, the right of every section of the community in Northern Ireland to be represented at the negotiating table. We have asserted, and will continue to, that the only barrier to that, in our view, is adherence to an armed and violent approach.
18.) We call in this document for the urgent restoration of peace, on an unequivocal basis, and for a total commitment to the Mitchell principles.
19.) There are some 200,000 more people at work in Ireland now compared with four years ago. At the same time, the lack of a job and the risk and fear of never finding a job is a grim reality for many thousands of adult men and women and young people.
20.) Much has been attempted – and a lot achieved – in terms of mitigating the crisis of long-term unemployment; community employment, improved training schemes, more opportunities for adult education, placement and counselling services and social welfare improvements.
21.) Local communities, state agencies, and the social partners, are working more effectively together in partnership than ever before.
22.) Nevertheless, it is as untrue today as it always was the "rising tide lifts all boats". It is evident that society as currently constructed fails to ensure that opportunities apply equally to all individuals and groups, including those who ware long-term unemployed.
23.) There is no doubt that violent criminal acts, often directed against women and the elderly, and major social problems associated with drug abuse are features of today’s Ireland. In this respect, we, as a society face an immense challenge.
24.) In this manifesto, Labour offers wide-ranging measures to grapple with the reality of violent crime and drug trafficking with its associated trail of criminality. At the same time, there is a clear need to intensify programmes to contain and rehabilitate those trapped in drug dependency. Our approach is based on the knowledge that no simple slogans or instant solutions will end this scourge.
25.) We will be tough and single-minded in supporting the reforms in the criminal justice system necessary to deal with serious crime. At the same time, our aim is to reduce and ultimately eliminate social deprivation and injustice. Too often, these are primary factors in causing criminal behaviour to begin and to grow.
26.) Our vision for the future embraces both a set of values and a range of policy measures that are appropriate to these values. Key elements of that vision and those values are:
27.) As we approach the millennium and the start of the new century, we also believe that vision should be set in a specific time frame. Forward planning and strategic thinking are important elements in our approach to politics.
28.) By the year 2010, which is now less than 15 years away, Ireland should achieve the following:
29.) The Irish Constitution guarantees a range of personal freedoms. Our political democracy provides many benefits and prevents many abuses. Despite that, however, in the economic and social area those personal freedoms have not been substantiated or made real for all citizens.
30.) Is has been rightly said that "income earning property is a bulwark of liberty only for those who have it". Many in our country have little or no property and no sense of belonging to a local or national community. Many cannot assert their legal rights through shortage of money. Others find it difficult or impossible to access either the job market or suitable training or educational programmes. The freedom of others, and particularly women, can be restricted through fear of the unknown assailant, fear of the drug peddler, fear for their children’s safety in the streets, and for some, fear of violence in the home.
31.) For us, the widening of personal freedom linked with social responsibility is a key core value. This can be advanced through:
32.) While we believe in, and advocate, the substantiation of personal freedoms, Labour is opposed to individualism as a social philosophy. Thatcherites and their Irish clones follow an alien creed.
33.) A fair society demands duties whether legally enforceable or not, while at the same time upholding rights. Support for the family, for carers, for the elderly, is an important priority.
34.) That’s why we believe that making individual and family freedoms a reality is closely associated with the issue of equality. Too often, they are the preserve of a minority. That’s why all our policies are geared around the concept of greater equality.
35.) Our aim is to ensure that each individual is free to attain his or her capacity. Our commitment is to emancipation, so that men and women can contribute both to their own development and to the broader purposes of social living in the local, national and world community.
36.) The ideas of social cohesiveness and solidarity are fundamental for Labour. In that context, we recognise that practical objectives have to be achieved in the context of the market economy. The goal of increased employment, and an attack on poverty and its causes, must be achieved against a background of free trade, of rapid technological change and communication advances.
37.) The global dimension is intruding ever more strongly into national and local economies. The "Information Society" is upon us. These are the realities. They are challenges to be met with enthusiasm – the task is to channel the benefits of growth and change so that they benefit our entire community, and not just some.
38.) In accepting the market system, with private enterprise and private property we recognise that we also have to seek to humanise it where necessary, but without undermining its capacity to perform.
39.) This can be done mainly by:
40.) Especially where people who are long-term unemployed are concerned, the market system needs modification. The human dimension of this is critical – the market system is an instrument capable of providing efficiency, not an ethical imperative. In the real world, people start out with widely divergent degrees of power and wealth. Equity and social solidarity are the real imperatives.
41.) We welcome this election. We welcome the opportunity to put ideas forward, and to seek a mandate for them. The policies in this Manifesto are ours – they are the basis on which we want to go forward.
42.) We will, of course, be campaigning in this election as part of an out-going Government. It is a Government that has achieved much. It is built on trust among partners, and on mutual respect. When the election is over, it is our hope that we will have a mandate to sit down and negotiate an agreed programme for the next five years. The principles upon which those negotiations will take place have been published separately by the Government Parties as a whole.
43.) In that sense, this Manifesto is the set of proposals, that we will bring to those negotiations. We want to negotiate from strength. We intend to fight the strongest election possible, and to do so on the basis of policies not personalities. That is the only way to make the voice of the voiceless heard as loud as possible.
44.) We will present our achievements, our values and our policies on as many doorsteps as possible in the next few weeks. We want to listen. We face a period of exciting change, and many challenges. We are setting out our stall – the building blocks to construct an ever more confident, just, inclusive and tolerant Ireland.
45.) And we do it with confidence. The track record of the last four years, the hope for the future. Visions and challenges, combined with practical policies. A slate of candidates that is second to none. Deep roots in the community, and a total commitment to its future. That’s Labour’s promise.
