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The New Purpose

Issued : Saturday 17 November, 2007

Thank you all for your kindness to me and my family, over the past few days. It means a lot.

I am very glad to have got here at last! I could never have imagined that it would have been this difficult to get to address my first conference as Party Leader.

Thank you Brendan for your warm introduction.

It is great to be with you, in Wexford, a place with a long and proud Labour tradition, which I know that you will continue, Brendan, for a long time to come.

I want to pay a personal tribute to my predecessor, Pat Rabbitte. Thank you, Pat, for five years of relentless work, and for your principled leadership of our party.

I am fortunate to have Pat's experience available to me, as well as that of Ruairi Quinn, as I set out to lead Labour into the future.

It is a great honour to be the tenth Leader of the Labour Party and to welcome here tonight our three new deputies, elected to Dáil Eireann last May. Joanna Tuffy, Sean Sherlock
and Ciaran Lynch. And I welcome our six new senators. One third of Labour's Oireachtas members are new. They demonstrate how bright our future is.

There may be some in politics who feel sorry for themselves, and who on 6000 a week are falling on hard times! Not us.

We are all gathered here tonight, members of the Labour Party.

From every part of Ireland.

From different backgrounds, personal and political.

Each of us with our own story.

But all of us with a common purpose.

We are in the Labour Party in some cases because of a personal or local or workplace injustice which stirred us to action. For others, it was perhaps a family tradition in the Labour movement. And for more - simply a belief in a better and fairer society, and a safer and peaceful world. A conviction that poverty can be ended. That the ideals of freedom, equality and solidarity can shape our new times, just as surely as they inspired James Connolly and Jim Larkin in theirs.

We are here because of what we believe. And Belief, however much it is shared, is a very personal thing.

Me? I believe that every person is equal. It is as simple as that.

That's what makes me a democrat.

That's why I am a socialist.

And why I belong to a social democratic party.

This basic idea that people are equal, and should be free to pursue their potential, in a society where we look out for each other, is what distinguishes the politics of the Labour Party.

That's why we insist on equal treatment for the sick, fairness at work, respect and tolerance between people of whatever gender, religion, sexuality or race. Labour always puts people first.

Sometimes I hear people say that it is hard to understand what Labour stands for. Or even ask if Labour is relevant at all to modern Ireland.

Relevant to modern Ireland? Labour made Ireland modern. Rights and freedoms which we all now take for granted, were won by the
Labour Party and its allies, often in the face of bitter conservative opposition. Many of those who pontificate now about Ireland's modernity, were those who bitterly opposed each modernising step.

It was Labour who gave women the right to the same pay for doing the same jobs as men;
Labour which brought in the laws which protect our rights at work;
Labour which introduced the legislation on equality, on standards in public life and freedom of information;
Labour that freed separated people from the dogmas of the past and allowed them remarry if they so wish.
It was Labour that made it legal to buy a packet of condoms!

And we are still modernizing Ireland. Our Civil Unions Bill is a simple measure of equality that can and should be supported by all parties in the Dáil. Shame on those who didn't.

Labour is proud of our achievements. But our proud past was possible, only because those who have gone before us thought of, and planned for
the future.

Forty years ago, a great man from this city of Wexford, Brendan Corish, described how the conservative parties had wasted the opportunities of Irish independence. He called for the building of "A New Republic", with a successful economy, to which people would come for work, rather than leave in desperation; and with modern, liberal laws that would free people to live their own lives. Today's Ireland, of which we are proud, was possible only because Leaders like Corish had a vision for it, and because decades of Labour members, some of whom were honoured in this hall tonight worked for it. There was Purpose to their politics.

Today's New Ireland is an uncertain place. We have been economically successful beyond our greatest expectations. But we are nervous about how long more the prosperity of the Celtic Tiger can be sustained.

There is unease too about the kind of country we have become.
Do values matter any more? Why has life become so cheap on the streets? And why are some people so disrespectful of the rights of others that a new term - 'anti social behaviour' - had to be invented to describe their activities.

Why did a brave woman named Susie Long have to die and why can't this rich country get medical treatment for its small population, on time, reliably and on budget?

We don't think about it all the time, but Climate Change is catching up with us, and we have to wonder what the planet will be like for our grandchildren.

We look forward, but some are never done looking back.

I see the Minister for Education is getting more interested in history. At taxpayer's expense she has sent books about Eamon De Valera to every school in the country.

I grew up in a house and family who respected De Valera, and
I can tell the Minister a few things about History.

Eamon De Valera would never have taken fistfuls of cash in a suitcase.

Sean Lemass, if he had the money they now have, would never have tolerated the inefficiency and waste in the health service.

And Jack Lynch would never have turned his back on Shannon.

We have become a country on auto pilot, with no clear idea as to where we are going. Drifting around in the present. With little sense of the future. Led by a Government, which is out of touch, over-paid, and cares only for their own survival.

Ireland needs a New Purpose - We need to get a sense of national direction and aspiration. A common cause, to inspire the allegiance and the imagination of the New Ireland.

We need a vision for our country, and its place in the new expanded Europe and increasingly globalised world, over the next two or even three decades. Building on the New Republic. Moving Ireland onto the next stage of our progress, the next phase of our country's history. A New Purpose for the new Ireland.

Imagine an Ireland, twenty years from now, with a million more people on an Island, where sectarian conflict is a distant memory from history.
A country, in which communities are integrated, with people from many different nationalities and traditions.

Imagine us leading the new world economy, still attracting the
best companies in the world, but also having strong indigenous companies doing the investing abroad. Can we see China, not as a threat to our jobs at home, but as our biggest export market for food and agricultural products and specialist services?

Think of Ireland no longer depending on oil, but leading the world with alternative energy harnessed from the wind and the waves, in that
nine tenths of our country, which is the sea around us.

Imagine visiting delegations coming here to see the best hospitals in the world, and to examine the most modern schools.

Imagine an Ireland that has a place in a school for every child, and no room for poverty.

An Ireland of living cities that work and move, and a thriving rural economy, providing a decent living for farming families.

Samhlaigh ar Corn Domhanda in iománaíocht. An cluiche is deaslámhaigh sa domhain, cleachtaithe ag na hEirinnigh nua, agus tugtha
ar ais da dtiorthe dhuchais sa Pholainn, Latvia agus an Nigéir.

Smaonaigh ar am a mbeidh an Ghaeilge le chlosteail chomh minic sa Charraig Dubh agus ata sa Cheathru Rua. Eire, in a mbeidh ar n-oidhreacht naisiunta nios laidre I dtir ata oscailte do na chultuir nua.

That is what Labour is for today. And this is Labour's mission. To make Ireland a great country, not free merely but fair as well, not just prosperous but progressive too. A country which is proud to be Irish and self-confident enough to be inclusive.

The New Purpose defines and describes Labour's agenda. Not just between here and the next election, but two or three elections from now. It is about the Ireland of 2020 and beyond.

We cannot stand still. We live in a world where the only certainty is change. We either chart our own course, or we drift aimlessly with the tide. If Labour has vision, we will know our destination. And Labour's values will be the markers by which we steer our way.

Our new purpose is to make Ireland a leader in the New Economy. The Celtic Tiger doesn't have to end in tears. It can be better even than it is, if we plan for the future. That future lies in Irish firms being able to appropriate ideas, commercialise them, and turn them into world leading products.

But the young researcher tonight, with a new idea needs more than just encouragement to turn innovation to commerce. She needs start up capital. So we need a shift in policy and in culture, away from providing
tax-incentives for low-risk speculation in property towards the higher-risk investment in start ups that will create jobs in the decades to come.

Our purpose is to build the new economy, and to be a voice for enterprise, business and aspiration.

That means investing more in education, research and innovation. We need to take Irish education to new heights.

Thirty five years ago, I was the first ever in my family to go to university.
Back then going to college was a unique privilege. Now it is a necessity, because it is education that drives a knowledge economy. And it is education that makes us free to live full lives in the new society.

We cannot afford to have 165,000 under 35s in our workforce without a Leaving Certificate. Or to have one in three children in some schools with a serious reading difficulty. Or to have only six thousand seven hundred leaving cert students with an honour in Maths from which to draw all the scientists and engineers and accountants of the future.

Labour is the party of universal free education, starting at pre-school. But Universal education should not stop at 16, or at Leaving Cert but should go on through higher or further education and continue through life as we all equip ourselves to cope and work in a rapidly changing world.

Our Purpose is Universal Third Level Education, because if we are to succeed in the New Economy, and enable all our people to reach their full potential then we must truly become a Land of Scholars. To do otherwise,
is to waste our greatest asset, the genius of our people.

Our purpose is to end poverty.

Nowhere is the great potential of the person more wasted than among those who are confined by poverty. Poverty is a thief. It steals childhood. It steals the light of learning, robs the warmth of belonging, plunders the innocence of being young.

In Ireland today, one in every nine children live in poverty. Despite the country's economic success, poverty remains an inherited condition, lingering on from one generation to the next. A country which sets its sights high has no place for poverty, or the cycle that perpetuates it.

But we will not abolish poverty, just with more welfare payments and more welfare officers. We will end poverty when we extend the ladder of opportunity to every child in this state and to their families. The key to ending poverty is access to universal public services, and the opportunity to succeed. Making sure that everyone can get a good education, can live in a decent home and can work their way to a better life.

So we must have pre-school education for every child, and be sure that every child is numerate and can read. We must support families who are trying to restore order to their lives. Our welfare system needs to be
re-invented, so that it no longer keeps people trapped in poverty, but acts as a springboard of opportunity.

Future prosperity,for all, will be built on an enterprising, creative economy, but it cannot be built on a narrow free market ideology. There will be no New Economy without individual flair, but neither will we prosper without collective effort. We must reward innovation, but we will not, indeed can not build the New Economy on poverty or gross inequality.

The grossest form of inequality in today's Ireland is to be found in our hospitals and healthcare system. When somebody gets sick, they should be treated for their illness and not according to their means.

Healthcare is at the heart of our New Purpose.

Healthcare is now, and always will be, a community service. Even the super-private clinics so favoured by Government, will be reliant on
tax breaks to make them viable.

We need a fundamental shift, to empower the patient, and to begin to construct a health service that is worthy of the Irish people.

It can be done. It is possible to fix the health service. After all, there are only four and a quarter million of us. About the population of Greater Manchester!

Fixing the Health service means building hospitals and Health Centres. And we are not short of builders!

It means staffing them and fitting them out with the best equipment.

And, of course we have to pay for it, and the best way to do that is through Universal Health Insurance, which will put the patient in control and deliver the efficiencies that we all know are needed.

And let's stop these circular arguments about what facility goes where. In the end it is what kind of care that matters, not where it is provided. Anyway, we need to provide for the health needs of a growing population for the next twenty or thirty years not just for the next two or three.

Nearly 60 years ago, in the bad times of the 1940s, If Noel Browne could build big hospitals and cure TB, nearly 60 years ago, in the bad old days of the 1940s, then surely in rich modern Ireland, it is not too much to expect that a woman can get a cancer test on time, be able to rely on the result, and then get whatever treatment she needs without having to join a queue which threatens her life.

Our Purpose over the next two decades is to create a better future for this planet.

The next ten to fifteen years is all that remains of our window of opportunity to turn the tide of climate change. It is the defining challenge of our age.

We are already seeing the effects of global warming in our lifetime, but it will be our children who will really have to cope with it. They have the right to inherit a planet that is not terminally ill.

If we act now, we can manage the transition to a low-carbon, sustainable economy on our own terms.

By planning our cities and towns for a future in which cheap oil is a distant memory.

By investing in renewable energy and in green technologies.

And by using our voice in Europe, and our relationship with the United States, to press for emissions cuts that will make a difference. And to ensure that it is not the world's poor who carry the burden of carbon reduction.

The world's poor need our help, not another disadvantage.
It is not acceptable that among our neighbours in the Global Village,
300 people die every hour of an AIDS-related illness, that 4000 children die everyday from diarrhoea caused by dirty water, or that eighty million children are out of school.

If we can google the earth and see the river-bed in Darfur, and the shacks of Swaziland, from the comfort of our sitting rooms, then we should be able to point and zoom in the food and the development aid that the people there need to lift themselves out of poverty, disease and war.

But the village we inhabit is not just global, it is local too.

The success of our society is measured by the strength of our communities. Neighbourhood, community and the need for each other. These values affect the quality of all our lives. They are the very essence of Labour values.

There must be a place in our community for every child.

A child with a disability should not a threat to the state, but a priority. The rights of citizens of a republic should not be resisted by legions of lawyers, but they should be respected, vindicated and provided for. So lets save some money on lawyers and just hire the ABA teachers instead!

We now have schools being opened on an emergency basis to cater for the children of immigrants. Did we witness the end of Apartheid in Africa, only to see the day when, here in Ireland, a baptismal certificate would become a latter day pass book. And to be fair, I don't think the Churches ever thought to see it either.

Segregation has no place in modern Ireland - the history of Northern Ireland teaches us that. If we want a cohesive republic it must be one that is tolerant and pluralist. If we want an inclusive, integrated society, we must be big enough to embrace difference, and be strong enough to insist on our core principles of equality, democracy and liberty for the individual.

Community-building is our purpose.

It is in our communities that we will win the war on crime.

The surge of gangland killings hasn't come from nowhere. Gardai, teachers and community workers across Ireland can tell you the little children today, who are likely to be gang members ten years from now. The indifference of middle-class cocaine users finances the drugs trade that kills so many of its working class footsoldiers.

We must confront the gangs with the full might and force of the state. But we must also fight a battle within our communities for the hearts and minds of our young people. As part of that battle we must re-invent policing, so that genuine community policing becomes the norm in An Garda Síochána.

This then is Labour's New Purpose.

To build the New Economy.

Universal third level education.

Ending poverty at home and abroad.

Halting climate change.

A health service that cures.

Stronger, fairer neighbourly communities.

This is our vision of Ireland, and of our place in the world.

Don't let some wizened, weary cynics tell us, all this is unrealistic, that we are naively dreaming. We have heard that before, and look how much we have achieved.

At every stage of change in this country, it has always been the dreams, ideals and vision of Labour that have led the way.

But to achieve change we must do more than talk about it, we must practice it.

This party that has led so much change in Ireland, must now have the courage to change itself. At every level of our organization, we need to do better.

I will lead this party to the best of my abilities. But, I don't rule the Labour Party, I serve it. When I said earlier that I believe every person is equal,
I apply that principle to the Labour Party as well. This party belongs to all of us, and we must, all of us, take responsibility for where the party
is going.

My job is to steer, and sometimes to point, from the vantage point
I have as leader. And here's what we need to do.

When you came into the hall this evening, there was a membership application form on your seat. Everyone of us knows somebody whom we think could be, should be, or once said they wished to be, a member of the Labour Party. But we have never got around to asking them to join. Let's do it now. Tomorrow. And when that person comes to a party meeting, welcome them, so they don't go away feeling excluded and not part of the circle. If your branch is not meeting, then it needs to be
re-organised, or maybe we need to put in place new units of organisation which meet the needs of the way we live our busy lives today.

And when, over the coming months, we meet with fellow members to discuss the selection of candidates for the local elections,
let's pick the best candidates. In particular, we need more women and more young people to be selected. And if the best candidate is not among our present membership, then lets look to like-minded people who share our values and are not yet members of the party.

And when we have picked the candidate, lets get out there to ensure that he or she is elected at the next local elections, which are now just 19 months away. So lets be on the doors and in the communities and organizing the meetings and the campaigns. Lets be a Party, not which polls and preaches, but which listens and responds.

This conference is the beginning of Labour's New Purpose, to re-build, re-organise, renew, and to make this a Party which is really fit for purpose.

When this conference is over, I intend to embark on a journey - physical and political to relearn Ireland. To visit communities across the country, talking with people about their lives, their families, and their aspirations. And to talk with members of the party about where we are going, and what we need to do to make Labour the natural party of the New Ireland.

Let's leave this hall tonight, proud to be members of the Labour Party, keen to speak up for Labour's policies, ready to defend our party and our principles and willing to work for our Purpose.

Politics is not a market transaction, or the preserve of an elite. It is not just another career choice. Politics is where we all meet as equals, and where we are measured, not by what we gain, but by what we give. Not by what we encash, but by what we contribute.

That ideal of service and patriotism is so necessary now.

Our purpose is to build the future, not with emotional attachment to old dreams, but with dreams of a better future that will inspire a new generation with the belief, with the knowledge, with the conviction, that great struggles lie ahead. A prupose that will bring people to engage again in a great contest of ideas. A purpose that will renew the idea of service, to the community, to the state, to the people, as a great and noble calling.

An Meitheal.

Dóchas.

Tír Ghrá.

Cuspóir.

Cuspóir nua an Lucht Oibre.

Nil aon cosc na limisteir, ar an aidhm ata agamsa don Lucht Oibre agus d'Eirinn.

For Ireland and for the Labour Party, the question is not how far we have come, but how far can we go.

Thank You.