SOCIAL DEMOCRATS LEADER Holly Cairns has used her first speech at the party’s national conference to outline what she called “a profound disconnect between where we are as a country and where we need to be”.
Cairns was given an extended round of applause upon taking the stage in UCD in Dublin.
In a televised speech, Cairns appealed to voters who she said have been “disillusioned” with Irish politics and have “lost hope” in the possibility of a better future.
One emblematic example of this “disconnect”, she said, was the apparent contradiction between a GDP per capita “that makes us one of the richest countries in the world, and 4,000 children growing up in emergency accommodation”.
She also contrasted Ireland being at full employment with “half a million adults” living in their childhood homes. The €8 billion budget surplus also featured, in comparison to “over 600,000 people living in emergency accommodation”.
“Is it any wonder people feel disillusioned?” she asked.
“Too many people are being left behind and too many people can’t see a way out that isn’t via the Departures Lounges in Dublin, Cork, or Shannon airport,” she said, referring to people choosing to emigrate rather than stay in Ireland.
Cairns described the trend as “a decades-old cycle of shoving generation after generation onto boats and planes to the UK, Australia, America and Canada.”
This, she said, was due to successive governments’ failure to provide “even the very basics like a roof over people’s head or a health service that is fit for purpose”.
Cairns said that “the tide is turning in Irish politics” and that the next general election “can’t come soon enough”.
“For the first time in 100 years, it is no longer a given that the next government will be led by Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael,” a change she described as “seismic”.
Among the political issues raised in her speech, Cairns focussed most heavily on housing, climate and healthcare, while also bringing up foreign policy, particularly Ireland’s response to the conflict in Palestine.
“There is no area where broken promises are more blatant than in housing,” she said of government policy.
“We have a clear plan,” she said, promising to deliver 50,000 homes per year if the party is elected into government. Affordable housing would be a “laser focus” for the Social Democrats if elected, she said.
To that end, she said, “we will deliver 10,000 affordable homes and 12,000 social homes per year”, as well as introducing a three-year rent freeze, aban on no-fault evictions, tax on vacant homes “with real teeth” and an end to the bulk buying of homes by investment funds.
The Social Democrats leader took aim at government healthcare policy as well, paying specific attention to the much delayed Sláintecare health plan and disability services.
“Seven years into a plan that should have taken 10 years to implement, we are nowhere near achieving universal healthcare,” she said.
“The full, accelerated implementation of Sláintecare is a red line issue for the Social Democrats in any programme for government.”
On the protection of the environment, Cairns said that the Social Democrats would use €6 billion of the budget surplus to create a “climate transformation fund” with the aim of making homes warmer, waters cleaner and lead to the rejuvenation of biodiversity.
Additionally, she said it could make Ireland a net exporter of energy “by the end of the decade”.
“Ireland could be held up as the example for the future of agriculture.”
Cairns took time to describe the scale of death and destruction in Palestine as “disgusting” and vent her frustration with the Government’s policy regarding the conflict in Gaza.
Rounding out this section, she said that “inaction becomes complicity”, which was met with a standing ovation from the hall.
The recent rise in anti-immigrant and refugee sentiment also got a mention.
“There are a small number of loud voices,” Cairns said, who claim “Ireland is full”.
“Ireland is not full, it’s just not working properly and that can be fixed.”
Cairns was met with another standing ovation at the end of her speech and was joined by her colleagues on stage.
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