Eoin Hayes TD 🌍

I raised this with the regulator of the accountancy and auditing profession and spoke about how we can better regulate the proper pay and conditions of the 17,000+ trainees who are currently at the earliest part of their career when costs of living, including housing, are particularly acute.

Trainees in professional services are far too often exploited and underpaid, and the pay disparity between them and the partners of those firms is extreme.

#accountants #trainees #auditors #graduates #consultancy

This can allow them to both thrive domestically and become successful international exporters. 

It was excellent to hear that this perspective is one shared by experts from NERInd ICTU when they came to the Enterprise committee last month.

#economy #business #enterprise

Indigenous businesses need to be supported so that the benefits we get from the multi-national presence here extend beyond temporary corporate tax receipts and actually helps to infuse our own homegrown enterprises with the technical skills and management practices they need.

Irish workers have proven that they can be the most productive in the world when the conditions are set up correctly, but we’re not doing enough to structure our economy like this currently.

Thanks, Gavin! I think it’s a great idea - elevating voices of people facing poverty, social exclusion, and isolation so we can have a more meaningful discussion on how public policy can support them is always a good thing. Can’t think of the more worthy group.

This role is a new one for me, but I have been raising issues around social protection since I was elected. Click the link in my bio to see my Dáil contributions in this area.

I’m so excited to develop the Social Democrats policy proposals in this area.

#socialdemocrats #socialprotection

In our alternative budget, the Social Democrats set out a vision for how the social protection system should operate in a modern Ireland, backed by a deep commitment to social justice and alleviating poverty.

The welfare state serves as the means by which we enable so much of the vital work that happens in our communities - supporting those of us with disabilities or who do care work, people in old age, and addressing the unconscionable problem of child poverty.

As I said in a recent speech in the Dáil, the welfare state represents one of our greatest endowments as a society, and delivering the kinds of progressive policies that can build a strong, effective system of social protection is one of the major ethical and political responsibilities of the state

📢 📢 I’m hugely excited to be taking on the role of Spokesperson for Social Protection for the @social democrats. It’s an incredibly important brief, and one that I’m passionate about.

Make no mistake about the kind of choices this government is making, and who they have chosen to leave behind.

#budget2026 #childpoverty #socialdemocrats

And yet when it came time to deliver, his government made their choice, which was to bolster the already dizzying profits of developers and their shareholders and to deliver the most regressive and corporatist budget in a generation.

The number of children in consistent poverty has doubled in the last year, and just last month the Taoiseach himself said that now is the time to tackle the problem.

The government has chosen to further fill the pockets of those in boardrooms and executive suites rather than tackle the scourge of child poverty in this budget. This is a colossal missed opportunity.

I’m working with local groups to push for works at the pumping station to be included in the government’s National Development Plan’s departmental programme next month, and for Dublin City Council to assign cleanup teams and increased signage in the area during discharges.

The other beach identified is in Buncrana in Donegal, which is scheduled to be addressed by the end of the year, but what about Sandymount?

Locals and people across Dublin will know that bathing has been banned here for several years, and that raw sewage being discharged into the strand at the Ailesbury Pumping station is an issue that has been happening for too long.

Sandymount Strand was identified in yesterday’s EPA report as one of two beaches in the country with “poor” water classifications.

#sandymount #seaswimming #environment #dublinbay #wastewater

The government must start to rectify this in the upcoming budget and support a new economic model for future generations.

Earlier this year, I used the honour of my maiden speech in the Dáil to shine a light on our fragile corporate tax base, and the dangerous levels of exposure to our reliance on the fragile intellectual property arrangements of foreign companies.

The government claims to be prudent managers of the public finances, but the weaknesses in our economy puts the future of our country at huge risk.

🚨 Ireland’s financial position is precarious - and it seems as if the government has no plan to strengthen it. I believe strongly in creating economic opportunities for everyone, and ensuring we support strong and fair wage growth as well as growing dynamic indigenous companies.

We also fail to live up to our most basic obligations as citizens in a modern republic.

The means test for carers is an affront to our values and to the dignity of care work done by people across the country. Abolish the means test for carers now. 

#care #meanstest #socialdemocrats

Care work is work, and it is hard work, and if we fail to recognise that, and fail to recognise the invaluable contributions which carers make to our society, then we fail to see the poetry of compassion and duty present all around us.

There is no poetry in this government. We must support the most vulnerable people in our society, and that means supporting the people who care for them too. The means test runs contrary to that obligation.

Without the work and belief of Kodzo and so many others behind the scenes in our party, we might not have had the success we did last year.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam. 💜

#socialsemocrats

While Kodzo didn’t get to see the great success our party had at the last election, he was instrumental in building the party over the years, and I was honoured to serve on the National Executive with him.

In July, before the Dáil went on summer break, I paid tribute to a friend of mine in the Social Democrats who passed away last year.

Kodzo Selormey was the best of us, someone who came from abroad but loved Ireland, and believed deeply in our duty to make it a better place for everyone.

I’ve called on the government to press ahead with the Sandymount Flood Defence scheme, and to consider reinsurance models such as those which have been effective in the UK and France to ensure proper flood insurance coverage is available to everyone, to protect lives, livelihoods, and homes.