Sinn Féin would spend €1 billion of the Apple tax windfall upfront on investment in working class communities, the party said today at its annual think-in ahead of the new Oireachtas term.
Speaking to TDs, Senators and election candidates at the traditional pre-term meeting of the parliamentary party, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said that an Equality for Communities Fund would provide “targeted capital investment” for sports, play, youth, community and arts facilities as well as public spaces.
In her keynote address, she said it would “transform communities impacted by generation after generation of neglect and cuts”.
Ms McDonald said that the €1 billion fund for social investment funded by the Apple tax payments would be targeted according to Pobal deprivation data.
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She said there would be a “wider conversation” on what should be done with the remainder of the money, but amid reports that the current coalition is planning to pre-commit large amounts to infrastructural spending, she warned: “I don’t think this government should be getting presumptuous about that. We need to think about that. We need to invest that very, very thoughtfully.”
The Dublin Central TD said that Sinn Féin election candidates would be expected to work hard and connect with their community, as well as share a Republican commitment to a united Ireland.
Asked about polling which suggested her party would command less than one in five rural voters’ first preferences in an election, Ms McDonald said the local and European votes in June had seen the electorate give a message to Sinn Féin “loud and clear”. She said that the party was now presenting its policies across a range of areas and would keep advocating for them in the interests of urban and rural dwellers.
Earlier in the day, in an interview with RTÉ's Morning Ireland, she said that people who abused the party’s candidates on the doorsteps during the last local election campaign were the same individuals seen “cavorting with very, very vicious loyalist elements” in Belfast during the summer.
A number of far-right agitators from Dublin attended an anti-immigration rally in Belfast last month that descended into violence. Some of the Dublin activists – who refer to themselves as “Irish patriots” online – appeared at the Belfast protest holding Tricolours alongside members of the loyalist community brandishing union flags.
Sinn Féin politicians had been activists in local communities for a very long time she said, adding: “We’re not Johnny come latelys to any of this.” There was, she said, a concerted effort online to “come at Sinn Féin” during the election campaign.
“The only thing I could conclude from the whole thing is that those who were shouting all of this abuse fundamentally don’t want change, fundamentally they want the status quo, fundamentally they don’t want all of the things that are better for our communities.”
Her party planned to run about 70 candidates in the next general election she said.
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