Speech by Joan Burton at the Labour Party Conference 2014

Today gives our election candidates a real opportunity to come together, share ideas and get your campaigns well and truly off the ground.

We will run about 185 candidates in the local elections, 169 of whom have already been selected and are busy knocking on doors and canvassing.

And of course our excellent MEPs Emer Costello and Phil Prendergast, and our superb candidate in Midlands North West, Senator Lorraine Higgins, also have their campaigns well under way.

This campaign will be rooted in the work that this party has done to restore the economy, protect communities and repair the damage done by the disastrous bank guarantee and the subsequent loss of a quarter of a million jobs.

In the three years since Labour was elected to Government, Ireland has experienced a massive turnaround.

Number one: the troika has gone home and Ireland has exited the bailout.

Number two: we can now borrow money at extremely competitive rates. We are once more functioning as a normal Eurozone country.

Number three: The economy is growing again and all the indicators indicate that the recovery is picking up pace.

Number four: through the Pathways to Work strategy, we are helping people back to work.

The figures show it, with the Live Register falling for 19 months in a row and 58,000 more people now in jobs, the vast majority of them in full-time employment.

Number five: around the country, we can see the fine schools built and refurbished under a Labour Education Minister – a clear and welcome sign of the recovery.

That is Labour’s record, but we have much more to do.

The benefits of economic recovery take time to filter through.

We have to ensure the recovery is felt in every person’s life and in every community across the country – urban and rural.

There has to be a social dividend that is concentrated on the lower-paid and on disadvantaged communities.

A social divided that narrows the gap between rich and poor.

Because if the financial crash showed anything, it was the fallacy of the “trickle-down” theory.

This was the obnoxious dogma that if we just made the rich richer, we’d all be better off eventually, because their wealth would trickle down.

It was insulting rubbish, but it dominated economic policy in the US and the EU for far too long – with disastrous results.

The only way to restore prosperity is if we build the recovery from the bottom up and the middle out, not from the top down.

It means working together to achieve full employment, fair wages, and an income tax system that gives hard-pressed workers a break as soon as humanly possible.

In turn, progress on those fronts would boost tax revenue and create room for new investment in key public services.

Across the country right now, a number of communities have more immediate concerns, having been severely affected by the recent storm weather.  

They’ve seen their homes flooded, their furniture destroyed, and in many cases have no insurance.    

We will provide the help they need, and have put in place the funding so that in the coming weeks and months, the money will be there to repair the damage and restore their homes.

Our councillors and local representatives will be on hand to help householders with their needs.

Just as our councillors and local representatives have always been there for local communities.

This is what Labour stands for.

Working together to promote local jobs and businesses.

Working together to revive towns and cities.

Working together to develop the rural economy.

Working together to support families and increase living standards.

Working together to reach our full potential.