A working class programme is designed to meet the needs of the working class. Nothing else comes first - not the banks, not the national interest (which is the interest of the ruling class), and not the "better, fairer way" of paying the bondholders proposed by trade union leaders. 

We repudiate utterly the bank bailout and the attempts to force payments from the workers and all the consequent cuts and austerities imposed to save capitalism

The needs of workers are easily expressed.  They survive by selling their labour, so socialists demand work for all, or full pay if the capitalists are unable to provide work.

Workers require housing, health, education, transport and information networks. Food prices should be controlled and a healthy and sustainable supply of food guaranteed.

Natural resources should be held and managed for the common good and a sustainable future and not privatised or subject to the market.

The democratic right of women to control their own  bodies is absolute and should not be repressed by unjust laws or religious superstition.

The workers movement supports democracy, both as a good in itself and also because it provides the best     conditions for workers to organize and defend themselves against class oppression.

The Banking crisis has further exposed the European Union as an undemocratic instrument of capitalist and imperialist rule, based on the principle of unending    austerity for working people within the confines of the Financial Stability Pact while the rich and the corporations engorge themselves. 

We call for the expulsion of the control mechanisms of the Troika, the European Commission, Central Bank and the IMF which, despite talk of an exit from the bailout, continue to control the Irish state. 

Applying the same logic we call for the expulsion of British intelligence agencies and military forces from Ireland, and the abolition of the subordinate legislatures in the Dail and Stormont. 

We believe that the struggle for an Irish democracy can only be realized by the establishment of the Irish     Workers’ Republic as part of a United Socialist States of Europe, based on working class solidarity and itself a stepping stone to global revolution.

Attempts to assert the rights of the working class take place at a time when the workers’ traditional leaderships are in a state of decay, with social democratic parties and trade union leaders supporting austerity. 

We do not believe that workers should accept for a moment the betrayal of the trade union bosses. On the other hand they should not abandon the union structures that they helped build up over generations.

We advocate a strategy of struggle "from above and   below." Demands for active resistance to austerity should be fought for at every level of the trade union movement. At the same time workers should begin to organise and act on the same demands in rank and file structures    independent of the union bureaucracies, linking with community and political groups to build a network of resistance.

In asserting our rights we make demands of the state and capitalist society, but we do not do so in expectation that there is a kinder, gentler capitalism that will nationalise the banks and protect the workers.

Supporters of a workers programme stand for election in order to publicise the needs of the workers. They use the electoral platform to urge workers to organize in their workplaces, communities and on the streets and never for a moment suggest that winning places in institutions of capitalist power can resolve the struggle between capital and labour.

A workers programme is aimed at the workers themselves and is for workers to act upon. Actions to demand their rights demonstrate that the capitalist state acts only to defend the capitalist class and will not be won over by moralistic calls for fair treatment. The task then is to act on our own behalf and to expropriate resources from the capitalists wherever we are strong enough to mount a challenge. 

Workers are then faced with the task of building a    revolutionary party to assert the needs of our class and mounting a revolutionary challenge for state power and the establishment of the Workers Republic, designed to meet human needs rather than servicing the inhuman drive for profit by the local gombeen capitalists, by the banks and by the transnational corporations.