A LABOUR TD has sharply criticised United Left Alliance (ULA) TDs accusing them of hypocrisy and of “resistance for resistance sake” ahead of expected protests at the Labour conference this weekend.
Colm Keaveney, a TD for Galway East, said that he was not worried by any protests at this weekend’s conference in his home county saying that Labour was more focused on the issues of government.
He told TheJournal.ie: “The easy and the cowardly thing to have done is to have gone into opposition,” speaking about the party’s choice to go into a coalition government with Fine Gael, a decision which has seen it criticised for reneging on pre-election pledges.
Keaveney said the ULA – a left-wing electoral alliance of the Socialist Party, People Before Profit and the Workers and Unemployed Action Group – stood for nothing and said that there only policy is to resist.
“The reality is that those people who are protesting in society are, you know… I see it coming from the ULA and so on. They are tripping over themselves with hypocrisy on many issues.
“They objected to the restoration of the minimum rates of pay, they objected to the adjustments on the USC (Universal Social Charge), and they objected to the government in relation to a legal framework for protecting low paid people in society.
“What do ULA stand for? Resistance for the sake of resistance. They’re only policy is to resist,” he added.
People Before Profit TD Joan Collins rejected the criticism saying that Keaveney’s reference to the ULA’s opposition to the minimum wage restoration was “disingenuous.”
She said that the ULA opposed the reversal of the minimum wage cut because it was a measure included in a bill in which there were “two or three” policies the alliance was opposed to.
“That included, as far as I remember, the increase in pensionable age from 65 to 66 and we have opposed that for a number of years,” she said.
Collins, a TD for Dublin South-Central, said that Keaveney was “playing politics” and said that Labour was more fearful of the what she said was a growing campaign against policies such as the household charge.
“Labour are more fearful of a protest movement gathering pace and the campaign against the household tax,” Collins told TheJournal.ie. “That’s part of a groundswell of people rooted in communities, nothing to do with Joan Collins or any other ULA TDs.”
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