New Decade, New Approach

This afternoon Ógra Shinn Féin reps on the Sinn Féin Ard Chomhairle backed a proposal from the party's officer board to accept the 'New Decade, New Approach' document as a sustainable basis to restore the assembly and re-enter the executive.

Below are just some of the positives that we believe are going to make an immediate, material difference to the lives of ordinary people;

✅ Executive to become Living Wage employer

✅ Pay Parity for nurses

✅ Moves to ban Zero Hours Contracts

✅ Dropped commitment to lowering Corporation Tax

✅ Anti-poverty strategy

✅ Moves to end age discrimination

✅ Jobs creation via Green New Deal

✅ PoG commitment to creating well paid, sustainable jobs

✅ Immediate mental health action plan

✅ Principle of civic engagement on policy issues

✅ Principle of objective need directing public spending

✅ Extended welfare mitigations

Crucially, these wins have been secured against the backdrop of a renewed, bolstered and ideologically hardened majority Tory govt. in London, who are preparing to unleash the most brutal of austerity assaults.

We believe that this can mark the start of what could potentially be a significant departure from a decade of failed, discredited, right-wing economic policy.

We're bunkering down. This agreement represents the basis for an executive that can and should lie down in front of this train of an ideological assault we are about to witness.

It's safe to reiterate, almost three years to the day, there will be no return to the status quo. Onward to the Republic.