Adams salutes the people of Rossport and Erris

national | politics / elections | news report

Sunday March 04, 2007 00:26

by Ard fheis visitor

In a stirring and far ranging speech to the Sinn Féin Ard fheis at the RDS on Saturday evening, Gerry Adams called for a restoration of the Stormont Assembly, saying that the lesson of recent history in the North is clear: The British direct rule ministers need to be sent home.

In the 26 counties he called for changes in the health, housing, education, drugs policies and also called for rural regeneration.

Across the island, he said, there is still a growing inequality between the richest and the poorest, in health, education and in job and career opportunity.

There is still, he reminded the audience, partition and foreign occupation.

Gerry Adams at the RDS

Concentrating on the issue of suicide, Gerry Adams pointed out that were 577 reported deaths by suicide across this island in the year 2003 to 2004. He has asked to speak about this with the Minister for Health for the Leinster House Government, but Mary Harney has refused to meet with him.

On drugs, Adams mentioned out that in just one small area of Dublin, more than 200 people, mostly young people, have died as a result of drugs. Last month 6 young people died within two weeks of each other as a result of drugs in this same area. He said that
these events and the spate of drug related and armed crime on the streets of Dublin and other cities and towns is a direct consequence of the neglect by successive governments of the needs of parents and children over the past three decades.

Gerry Adams also made reference to the statement by Michael McDowell that inequality is a good thing. He called this statement "arrogant, patronising nonsense".
On Health, he made clear that Sinn Féin's commitment is to provide a public health service free at the point of use, and available as needed - not after years on a waiting list. He committed the party in power to immediately provide a medical card for everyone aged under eighteen.

On Education, he said that there should be no reason why children and their parents have to protest about rat-infested schools, or old, poorly heated buildings, about the absence of vital play areas, or about dangerous and deadly school buses. He added that is no excuse for the crisis that this government has allowed to develop in the childcare sector.

Speaking about the nature of the Sinn Féin party, Adams pointed out that the party is unique in that it is a party born in struggle, with a membership emerging from the communities most under the strain of political and economic oppression, north and south.

He said the party members know how difficult it is to make mortgage repayments and to pay the rent on incomes eaten away by inflation and taxation. He pointed out that the party's elected representatives live on the average industrial wage. The rest goes into the party and constituency services.

Speaking about the crisis in housing in the 26 counties, Adams provided startling statistics. In 2005 the 26 county government funded local authorities to build just over 4,000 social and affordable homes. For their part charities provided another 1,400.

However Government policy favoured private development. In the same period, they built 81,000 over priced houses and countless expensive apartments. This housing crisis needs an urgent and direct response. "Will it come from this government?" He asked. "No. Why? Because the wealthy property developers are their friends."

Castigating the Fianna Fail govt. for the giveaway of the country's natural resources, he saluted the the courage of the people of Rossport and the Erris peninsula. He pointed that they are not alone. Across the country other communities have been forced to engage in battles over threats to their natural environment, against unwanted incinerators or waste facilities, against the pollution of water and land, against the theft and destruction of our fishing stocks and more recently the sugar beet industry.

On the future, Adams made clear that the war is over, and the peace must now be built.

What Sinn Féin is about, he said, is delivering Ireland's future and making Irish republicanism relevant to people in their daily lives.

The party has to have a vision for a new Ireland of equals, where orange and green are united, where there is real meaning to the words democracy, equality, justice, and human rights at every level in society, in every town and townland, and in every city and village across the island of Ireland.