21 December 2015
By Bryan Smyth
bryan@TheCork.ie
Cork City Workers’ Party Councillor Ted Tynan has said that efforts by Joan Burton to portray the Labour Party as the social conscience of the coalition government and a brake on Fine Gael’s low-tax, cheap labour economy are a “pathetic attempt to distance Labour from five years of austerity”.
Cllr. Tynan said that the Labour Party in government had not been Fine Gael’s conscience but its soul-mate, with ministers Burton, Howlin, O’Sullivan, Lynch and their colleagues “as adept at wielding the cuts knife as any of their Fine Gael counterparts. Who can forget cuts to disability allowances, carer’s allowance, the winter fuel allowance and the many other vital payments to vulnerable people slashed by the present government?”
“After five years of deeply painful austerity Joan Burton’s last appeal to save her party from oblivion is to cast it in the role of saviour of the vulnerable from a voracious Fine Gael. This is not an image that will be recognised by those who have suffered under both Labour and Fine Gael and will not wash in constituencies like Cork North Central which have seen some of the worst of those cuts”, said Cllr Tynan.
