People Before Profit Tallaght

15/10/2026

🗞️‘I’m embarrassed’ – South Dublin mother takes out €5,000 loan to repair mouldy council home in ‘forgotten’ estate.

People Before Profit councillor Kay Keane, who has described Mac Uilliam as a “forgotten estate”, said she had made more than 40 representations to South Dublin County Council about maintenance issues there this year alone.

“I really feel the many requests for maintenance-related issues are taking too long to resolve. Numerous times works carried out prove to be insufficient, which leads to tenants feeling frustrated having to report the same issues to the council,” she said.

“I have sent representations into the council for up to 11 years. This year the number would be in the ballpark of 40-plus.

“I feel the whole of Mac Uilliam needs to be inspected and all maintenance issues logged as a whole. A plan must be put in place to resolve the issues, not just fixing one window, leak or safety issue.

“No one should be living in damp or mouldy conditions. Windows and doors that need replacing should be completed within a set timeframe, not a vague notice of works needed have been reported.”

https://www.independent.ie/county/dublin/im-embarrassed-south-dublin-mother-takes-out-5000-loan-to-repair-mouldy-council-home-in-forgotten-estate/

Parent and daughter both have respiratory disease that they attribute to damp conditions in house

14/10/2026

300,000 workers are preparing to strike in the largest wave of industrial action in decades. The headlines are already running with language like “chaos”, and “disruption.” Hiding who exactly caused the chaos. So let us be absolutely clear about who brought us here. The government had every opportunity to deliver a deal workers could accept. Instead, time and again, it chose to defend the interests of billionaires and bosses over the people who keep this country running.

Workers did not choose this but they should not be guilt-tripped for a moment into changing course like some will try and do. A government that refuses to listen has forced this.

Now is the time to build the broadest possible movement of solidarity. Workers, students, disabled people and tenants must all take action, join the fight and bring the maximum pressure to bear on this government. We have the opportunity to turn this strike wave into something much bigger: a collective challenge to an economic system that puts the needs of the billionaires, the landlords and the bosses ahead of everyone else. Workers power is how we build a future that finally tackles inequality and delivers a future where we can all live in dignity.

14/10/2026

Why Public Sector Workers Are Right to Strike.
(Link to read in comments).
With the government refusing to take public workers’ and their unions seriously, Stewart Smyth sets out the background to the strikes and argues that we need to prepare for escalating the strike action.

Chambers thinks there isn’t a basis for the 300,000 public sector workers to take strike action. Martin says the strikes are unwarranted. They both claim to not understand why the unions are organising this action, invoking their best impressions of an innocent bystander.

They claim they are open to negotiations and have officials ready to go if only the unions would agree and stop putting pre-conditions.

Union leaders have called out this position saying the government is not serious about negotiations as they waited until the middle of June two weeks before the end of a 30-month pay deal to even contact the unions.

Then the government entered the room and started demanding discussions on efficiency reforms and restructuring across the public services, before they were willing to talk about pay. See, despite all their spin, it was the government that put the pre-conditions on the negotiations.

The union leaders, reflecting the anger of their members over the cost of living crisis, stated they wanted to sort out pay first, with a commitment from the government that they understood the cost of living pressure and an appropriate pay deal was on the cards.

Chambers and his officials refused to give such a commitment!

It’s an old adage but how do you know a government Minister…

14/10/2026

Solidarity with Public Sector Workers. Workers are falling behind while profits boom for energy and grocery companies. Across the board, living standards are falling in a country where the Government expects to run a surplus of €6.7bn this year and €9.5bn in 2027.

Between 2021 & 2025 public sector wages fell behind inflation by 5.5%. In 2026 workers got 2% when inflation is 3.9%. Inflation will be at least 3% next year. Workers need at least 10% just to catch up and stay ahead. The Government has provided €1.2 billion in the budget for pay increases. This is far from what is needed. There is more money there. The Government will have to be forced to use it to provide the inflation proofed pay increases workers need.

People Before Profit stands fully behind public sector workers and encourages all workers to get behind their struggle.

Set to be the biggest strike of the 2020s, Wednesday 14 October will see schools, public offices, health centres and hospitals blocked by pickets as 100,000 workers unite in a national picket. The potential is hard to overstate.

13/10/2026

Welcome to 'The Golden Age': War, Decay, and Resistance in Trump's America.

Right now, the United States has initiated a new phase of its unprovoked and illegal war with Iran. Ranting and raving about Iran being led by ‘scumbags’ is another example, if you needed one of the erratic and unstable mind of President Donald J. Trump. Trump also declared the ‘ceasefire’ over, if there ever was one to begin with. Iran responded by firing missiles at U.S. military bases and closing the Strait of Hormuz.1 For the foreseeable future, there will be a permanent armed conflict of greater or lesser intensity in the Persian Gulf region. Meanwhile, Israel continues to wage war in Lebanon with Washington and Tel Aviv at each other’s throats, an unprecedented situation in the long relationship between the U.S. and Israel.2 The first phase of the Iran War was widely seen as a humiliating defeat for President Trump and the United States across the political spectrum.3,4 Despite Trump’s panicked efforts to justify the terms of the now-dead Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to avoid a global depression - due to the burgeoning economic costs of the blockade of oil through the Strait of Hormuz - it is clear that the war was settled on Iran’s terms.5

Among the key points of the MoU are a massive $300 billion reconstruction program for Iran, an end to the regional war on all fronts (including Lebanon), an end to the mutual blockade of the Strait, and lifting economic sanctions on Iran.6 The U.S and Israel launched a war to effect regime change in Tehran and to destroy the country’s military capabilities, but instead they have strengthened their regional rival. All of the terms outlined in the MoU are amazing in-and-of themselves, yet the one that stands out, is the status of U.S. military forces in point 4: “The United States of America further undertakes to remove its forces from the proximity of the Islamic Republic of Iran within 30 days after the final Deal.” This strongly hints that the U.S. was willing to negotiate the closing of its string of military bases and radar installations that surround Iran, many of which were rendered inoperable by Iranian missile and drone strikes, and even possibly, its Naval task forces from the Gulf.7 Now all that also appears off the table. Not since the Paris Peace Accords to end the Vietnam War in January 1973 was the United States prepared to accept terms so humiliating.8

The consolation prize for the U.S. is that Iran can maintain its current (civilian) nuclear program, while agreeing not to develop a nuclear weapon, which it previously agreed to during the Obama presidency.9 It’s hard to see how a future agreement between the U.S. and Iran won’t roughly come to the same conclusion. Iran clearly has the upper hand. This set off an initial round of panic in Washington. U.S. Senator, Chris Murphy (D.-Conn.), took to the floor of the U.S. Senate, and told those assembled and the wider viewing public, that the Iran war was “the biggest foreign policy blunder in 20 years.”10 He revealed that he,

knew the deal was going to be bad. I knew the deal was likely to be humiliating for the United States of America, but I didn’t think it was going to be this humiliating. The war needs to end basically upon any terms, but it is important for us tonight, as we are reading the details of this agreement to understand how to never make this mistake again.
The tepid opposition in Congress to Trump’s war was reflected by the narrow passage in the House and Senate of the “War Powers Act” in June.11 Trump typically dismissed the vote and called it ‘meaningless’. He then growled on social media, “These Senators have just made my job more difficult, but I will get it done, one way or the other, because I always get it done!” While major news outlets, including the BBC, were quick to highlight, “The vote marks the first time that both chambers of Congress have approved a concurrent resolution instructing a president to end a military action since the War Powers Resolution of 1973 was enacted.” There have been many U.S. wars since 1973. Despite claims that Trump represents a fundamentally different type of presidential leader, he shares much with past presidents on foreign policy. We’ve had an imperial presidency for a long time.12

Any Democratic and the small number of Republicans opposed to the renewed attacks will be faced with the question: What’s their alternative? The war has been unpopular with the American public since it began.13 The quick U.S. military operation that kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolaus Maduro and his wife—the 21st Century version of ‘A splendid little war’—deluded the Trump White House into thinking that their enemies were empty storefronts.14 A lot is at stake here for the U.S. When the United States was defeated in the Vietnam War, it opened up a space for a few years that allowed national liberation struggles against U.S. backed tyrants, notably in Nicaragua and Iran, both in 1979. Today, the primary concern of the United States is the expanding global presence of its peer economic power, China.15 Over the next few weeks, we will see if the renewed fighting will deepen the small cracks in the leadership of the Republican Party or will Trump simply backtrack on everything?

Trump’s military disaster in Iran has certainly revealed a weakened power. One that is still highly destructive, yet unable to achieve its primary political goal in the Persian Gulf. The simple truth of the matter is that anything can happen, and everything is possible. We are clearly at a major turning point, with U.S. military prowess and political influence questioned in the Greater Middle East and other parts of the globe, while still projecting itself as the dominant global power.16 The panic over the Iran deal in Washington, has once again revealed deep anxiety in the U.S. political class about Trump’s erratic behavior.17 Instead of Trump’s stated goal of restoring America’s preeminent position in the world, he has accelerated its decline.

While Trump was desperately trying to extricate himself from Iran during the phase of the war, where he delivered defeat in record time, he has also mused about other future conflicts. Though Trump promised the end of foreign wars during his 2016 and 2024 campaigns, lately, and typical of him, he said he never made that promise.18 He’s also raised the specter of more costly, burdensome wars. The U.S. military budget is nearly a trillion dollars. Trump wants to spike it up to $1.5 trillion to be paid for by looting the federal healthcare budgets.19 Recently he stated, “It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things,” (said).20 “They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal level. We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country.” And then added, “We’re fighting wars.”

The United States has lost four wars in the 21st Century, so far: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and now Iran, an unprecedented string of military defeats. The renewed fighting deepens the quagmire that the administration finds itself in with no end in sight and at ballooning cost. The question of Guns or Butter that has been perennially debated since the Vietnam War, has always been resolved in favor of guns, yet how much more can working class and lower middle class people take?21 Something has to give.

The ‘Golden Age’
Trump is big on campaign promises that have gotten more fanciful with each election. His whole business and political life is modeled on a carnival barker. His ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) campaign slogan is a slightly reworked one from Ronald Reagan.22 Trump declared in his second inaugural speech after being sworn into office, “the golden age of America begins right now.23 From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world. We will be the envy of every nation.” He was building upon themes that carried him to the White House in 2016, but whose first term crashed on the rocks of his incompetent handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, economic crisis, and the Black Lives Matter uprising following the police murder of George Floyd.24

Trump’s comeback campaign of 2024, rested upon the failed promises of the Biden Administration to alleviate the declining living conditions of broad swaths of the working and middle class, exacerbated by the worst inflation in decades.25 Trump made even bigger promises this time around, to be delivered more quickly. Standing before Congress in February to deliver the annual Presidential ‘State of the Union’ speech,26 he declared that we had arrived:

Less than five months from now, our country will celebrate an epic milestone in American history, the 250th anniversary of our glorious American independence. This July 4th, we will mark two and a half centuries of liberty and triumph, progress and freedom in the most incredible and exceptional nation ever to exist on the face of the earth. And we’ve seen nothing yet. We’re going to do better and better and better. This is the golden age of America.
Except for the most cult-like of his followers, few believe it. Trump’s polling is in the toilet, exacerbated by a failed, unpopular, and costly war with Iran; but it began to decline before the war started in February 2026.27,28,29

Trump’s ‘Golden Age’ has drawn comparisons to the “Gilded Age” of the late 19th Century.30 The Gilded Age was a mocking description of the era popularised by American author and satirist Mark Twain.31 It was an era of obscene wealth, grinding poverty, and political corruption. Most Americans know it today as the era of the Robber Barons, the wealthy titans of industry whose unscrupulous methods, included outright thievery, and strike breaking by private armies. The most notorious of the Robber Barons was John D. Rockefeller, the founder of the Standard Oil Company monopoly, whose immense wealth made hi

War, decay, and resistance in Trump’s second term.

13/10/2026

No Data Centre in Kilmeaden.
The third-biggest data centre is planned for the village of Kilmeaden in Waterford. Rebelnews.ie spoke to Amanda Power on the growing opposition of local people to the proposal.

Could you start by telling us something about Kilmeaden and how people feel?

Kilmeaden is a small village about seven miles from Waterford city. The surrounding area is primarily agricultural, and there used to be a cheese plant in the village before it moved to Kilkenny.

Two new housing estates were built in the village by Kent Homes, and they faced no objection from people because we knew there was a need for housing.

The last of these houses was sold about two weeks before Kent Homes, which owns a lot of land in the area, applied for planning permission for data centres directly across the road from them.

The houses they built were expensive enough, but they were sold to people based on living in a quiet rural area. Yet the same company wants to build a massive data centre on their land.

Who exactly is involved in this proposal for a data centre?

You have to distinguish between those who apply for planning permission, those who will build and own the data centre and the big tech company that will lease or use it.

We have not been told who will use this data centre. But I don’t think it is a coincidence that Mark Zuckerberg has just bought a castle in Lismore and says he intends to make it a base for his business operations. This could set a precedent for how this country could become a location for data centres.

The planning application to Waterford County Council was signed by Kent Homes, a family-based property developer based in Tramore and Craig Rathnew, a company set up only in 2023.

The data centre will be built by Echelon, a company which describes itself as an ‘international data centre infrastructure developer’ and which already owns six facilities in Ireland and Britain.

Can you outline why exactly you are objecting to this project?

Firstly, it is not in the right place. It will be situated right in the middle of Kilmeaden, on the left side of the village and about half a kilometre long.

I grew up in a house that would be looking directly onto it. It will engulf people living in the area.

Second, there will be sixteen gas turbines, possibly working 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Why should people be forced to live beside such turbines when they do not know the effects on their health?

There will also be a field of solar panels but professional experts we have contacted have explained that only 2% of the data centre’s energy will be supplied by these.

So here is the crucial point: Under the government’s proposals, data centres have been given six years to reach a target of getting 80% of their energy from renewables. A lot of people are not aware of how the government is facilitating data centres in this way.

People are paying a PSO levy to upgrade the grid – but the reality is that almost all our electricity is already being consumed by renewables that are linked to data centres. They also get energy at a much cheaper rate than the domestic user must pay.

The standard argument against campaigns like yours is that you are guilty of NIMBYISM. Are you against data centres only in your backyard?

I don’t agree. I am for a moratorium on data centres. I don’t want them built in anyone’s backyard or village. We should stop building them, as we already probably have the highest number of data centres per head of the population.

We need, as a country, to investigate what they are used for. I personally would prefer if we just stopped building them.

They are consuming too much of our electricity. They are already endangering targets for Climate Action. We don’t even know how much water they are using.

The push for hyperscalers, as these huge data centres are known, is linked to Artificial Intelligence. They require even more sophisticated semiconductors and large amounts of energy. Huge amounts of capital are being invested in AI and we are not even sure that those investing are guaranteed the profit they desire.

Yes, I agree, and I think it is all very dodgy. There is huge hype about AI, but they are forcing it on us. When I use Google, AI is pushed on me. They want to make us so used to AI so that we eventually all pay for it.

It is really pushed on teenagers, and before you know it, they will be consulting AI agents for deeper answers to questions about life.

They tell us that we need these data centres to power our mobile phones. But there is a lot of waste involved. If you say a word like ‘yacht’ you will be inundated on social media with advertisements to sell you services linked to yachts. They are using data centres to sell us commodities and to monitor what we are doing. We should never fall for their catchline about ‘you need them for mobile phones’. So, what are your plans to oppose them?

Right now, the planning application for the Kilmeaden data centre is before the Waterford County Council. We held a protest at their office, and even though it was a Monday, a good few people turned up.

We have been told by a top civil servant that data centres are part of our ‘critical infrastructure’. But legally they do not yet fit that definition. So, you will have to watch how this government, in a sneaky, underhanded way, tries to bring them under ‘critical infrastructure’ provisions.

But for the moment they must first apply for permission from local councils. Waterford County Council are due to give its determination on October 19th.

On Saturday the 10th October we are organising a convoy to bring the issue to the people of Waterford. The cars will leave Kilmeaden and travel into the city to highlight why we oppose this data centre.

Whichever way the council decides, it is bound to go to An Bord Pleanála. The companies have put so much effort into this; they are bound to appeal to An Bord Pleanála, and no doubt, so would local people, if the council decided to give them planning permission.

Good for you. But how do you think you can win a moratorium if this state is determined to market itself as a country for data centres?

We have to link up with other campaigns across the country. We need public pressure to force this government to do an about-turn. We are supposed to live in a democracy, so they will have to listen to people.

https://rebelnews.ie/2026/10/09/no-data-centre-in-kilmeaden/

Could you start by telling us something about Kilmeaden and how people…

13/10/2026

Trade Unions – making them work for us.
With the public sector unions in the South receiving overwhelming support for possible industrial action going into the pay talks, Rachel Hickey, of the UCD union section committee, looks at the potential for real class power that unions have.

If trade unions are serious about changing the conditions workers live and work under, they cannot confine themselves to the workplace – they must organise, mobilise and fight on the political issues that shape workers’ lives.

As Rosa Luxemburg wrote, “There are not two different class struggles of the working class, an economic and a political one, but only one class struggle.”

At the heart of trade unionism is a simple idea: one worker has very little power, but workers acting together can have enormous power.

But there is a bigger question here. If workers have the power to collectively change the conditions under which they work, why should that collective power stop at the workplace door?

The problems facing working people do not begin and end with their employment.

A worker may have a decent workplace agreement but still be unable to afford a home. They may have a reasonable salary but spend a large proportion of it on rent. They may have secure employment but be waiting months for medical treatment.

These are not simply individual problems. They are social and economic problems. And this is where trade unionism can become something much bigger than a mechanism for resolving workplace disputes.

There are people who primarily live from the wealth they own, and there are people who primarily live from the work they do. That creates a fundamental common interest among working people.

Unions are key
This is one of the reasons unions are so important. They can help people recognise that many of the problems they experience individually are shared problems.

When millions of people experience the same problems, we should start realising that these problems are built into the way society is organised.

Capitalism likes to present social problems as individual problems. If you cannot afford a house, you are told to save more. If your wages are too low, you are told to improve your qualifications and on and on and on.

This is where the collective nature of trade unionism becomes important. Unions teach a very practical lesson: problems that cannot be solved by individuals can sometimes be solved collectively. People acting collectively can demand that society’s resources are organised differently.

The principle is the same: collective problems require collective power. Unions can be part of the fight for society.

In and beyond the workplace
For that reason, unions should not see their purpose as simply protecting their members inside their workplaces.

Of course, that work is essential. A union must defend workers against unfair treatment, fight for decent wages and protect conditions of employment. But if the union movement limits itself to those things, it risks fighting the symptoms while leaving the wider causes untouched.

Workers win a pay rise, but the increase is immediately swallowed up by rising rents. Healthcare workers can win better conditions, but the health service remains chronically underfunded.

These are not arguments for abandoning workplace trade unionism. They are arguments for recognising that workers’ lives extend beyond the workplace.

A union movement should therefore be involved in the wider struggles of society: housing, homelessness, anti-racism, for better public services, education, healthcare, the cost of living, inequality and the distribution of wealth. Not because unions should become political parties, but because working people cannot separate their working lives from the society in which they live.

They should have the opportunity to change the society itself.

Collective power
Unions are not simply service providers for their members. They are organisations through which working people can develop collective power. And collective power can change much more than a workplace.

A political General Strike is illegal under the Industrial Relations Act (1990) but a trade union should not regard existing laws and rules as beyond challenge simply because there are laws.

Where laws prevent workers from collectively acting on political issues that directly affect their lives and interests, workers can argue for democratic legitimacy in their collective capacity to challenge and change it.

A union’s fundamental responsibility is to organise workers collectively and to defend and advance their interests.

Where laws or institutional rules obstruct those interests, workers have the right to organise to change them – through campaigning, collective action, protest and civil disobedience. The existence of a law should not by itself determine what workers regard as just or unjust. But most of all, the workers’ greatest tool is the strike.

Contradiction
Thus, there is a contradiction at the heart of the modern trade union movement.

Unions were created because workers recognised that they could only protect themselves by organising collectively. The fundamental power of that organisation is the ability to withdraw labour. Yet, in Ireland, much of the union movement has increasingly become organised around not using that power.

The result is a strange situation where workers belong to organisations whose greatest strength is their collective ability to stop work, while those organisations can spend much of their time finding ways to resolve disputes without workers ever having to exercise that power.

So, are unions using the power that workers have given them? Are the unions truly representing their members in the fullest sense? Are they working to ensure that their members are fully protected from the harshness of a capitalist world?

The union exists to organise the collective power of those workers. That means the power to strike is not really the power of the union bureaucracy. It belongs to the members. The union is supposed to organise that power, protect it and, when necessary, use it.

Using their power
This creates a serious problem when the structures of industrial relations become more concerned with preventing industrial action than with building workers’ power.

If we believe that workers have collective power, then we must believe in using that power. Trade unions cannot be reduced to organisations that negotiate the terms of employment within the society as it exists. They should be organisations through which working people can organise, mobilise and fight to change the conditions of their lives and, ultimately, the society in which they live. The power of the union does not belong to its structures, its officials or its procedures.

It belongs to the workers who make up the union. The question, therefore, is not simply whether unions have power, but whether workers are being encouraged to recognise that power, to engage with it and to use it. And by workers we mean those who work by hand and brain, blue collar and white collar, everyone whose surplus labour is stolen by those who have capital.

If the problems facing working people are collective problems, then they require collective solutions. And if workers acting together have the power to change their workplaces, there is no reason why that collective power should stop at the workplace door.

If trade unions are serious about changing the conditions workers live and…

13/10/2026

People Power Forced Drumcree U-Turn. "Not a united Ireland run by the same landlords and developers who run things now, but a socialist Ireland built by working class people - of all backgrounds and from all communities - organised together. We’ve seen a glimpse of what that looks like on the Garvaghy Road. Our job now is to build it across Ireland."

"It didn’t come from the courts... Nor did it come from a Secretary of State... It came from the community... and thousands of ordinary people standing with them over the past two weeks. Working class communities organised from below forced every institution... to move."