McDaid slammed for attack on low paid workers & welfare recipients

The recent comments by Donegal North-East TD Jim McDaid, in which he called for cuts in social welfare rates and the scrapping of the minimum wage, are indicative of the mentality of Fianna Fáil and the political establishment at large. There has been a concerted effort by them, cheered on by big business interests and right wing elements within the media, to make low paid workers and welfare recipients scapegoats for the economic crisis. If they get their way and social welfare cuts are imposed and the minimum wage is abolished, the end result will be a major increase in the levels of poverty and hardship suffered by families throughout this state.

The severity of these measures on families struggling to survive the savage cutbacks that have already been imposed on them should not be underestimated. The fact that McDaid is willing to inflict such hardship on some of the most vulnerable sections of our society, while he continues to live his lavish lifestyle drawing a massive salary and over generous expenses, just shows how completely out of touch he is with the reality of life for ordinary workers and social welfare recipients.

Many, many families will now be forced to look elsewhere elsewhere to make ends meet. The only people that will benefit from the cuts that McDaid is insisting on will be the greedy and unscrupulous moneylenders whom desperate families will be forced to turn to as a last resort in order to provide for the needs of their children.

McDaid is trying to make these families, to make workers and the less well off, scapegoats for the incompetence and greed of the wealthy business class and their political representatives who created the economic crisis. Workers and the less well off did not create the crisis. They must not be made pay for it in order to bail out the banks and the developer friends of Fianna Fáil. We must resist all attempts to further target the living standards of workers and their families