The Galway West byelection will provide the next electoral opportunity for parties of the left to co-operate, Labour Party leader Ivana Bacik has said.
Ms Bacik said Catherine Connolly’s landslide victory in the presidential election had shown there was a “real appetite for an alternative vision of politics” and an end to what she called the politics of the past associated with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.
She said she hoped parties of the left would build on that moment in the byelection which is a result of President Connolly’s election success.
Ms Bacik was speaking to the media in Limerick, where its annual party conference is being held. Flanked, among others, by Galway city councillor Helen Ogbu, she said the party would contest the election with its own distinctive identity and messages.
“I expect other parties will too, but what I think we’re going to see is a sense of commonality, of calls of common purpose and common values,” Ms Bacik said.
“That’s what we’ve brought throughout the presidential campaign, parties uniting behind the same candidate, but articulating and carrying out the campaign in accordance with our own identity.
“I think that’s how we actually build strength on the left, through coming together as distinct parties with a common cause. I would see the Galway byelection as another opportunity for us to do that.”
The Labour leader said her party had “significant differences with each of the three bigger parties: Fianna Fáil; Fine Gael; and Sinn Féin.
“We’re a party of the centre left. What we need to do is work with other parties in the centre-left, who share our vision and our values. That, for us, means working with the Social Democrats, working with the Green Party.”
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She said the party would be bringing a private members’ motion on the Occupied Territories Bill before the Dáíl next week, and said that was an example of where wider co-operation among left parties could work.
“Where there is common cause, as there is on the Occupied Territories Bill, we work with other parties in opposition too.”
However, she said: “Fundamentally, this is about building a strong centre-left so we can go into the next general election with a clear programme for change that can lead policy in the next government.”
The conference, in the Radisson Blu Hotel, is holding sessions during the day on housing, the cost of living, climate and public service.
The party’s housing spokesman and TD for Limerick City, Conor Sheehan, renewed his criticism of the latest Government housing plan, saying that by removing annual targets, the Government wanted to “duck and dive” accountability.
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“What we know for sure is that rents are going to go up from March of next year with the Government’s new rental rules, and there is nothing in the plan to suggest that the Government is in any way going to look to mitigate that,” he said.
“There is nothing in the plan either in terms of single adults in long-term homelessness – which for me is a big cause for concern, because we know single adults are the biggest group of people in homelessness.
“Once a single adult goes into homelessness, it’s very hard to get them out.”
