Adams: We want our young people back, where they belong

For some parents, said Adams “all their children have left. They are the Skype generation, the scattering — given a final push out of the country by targeted dole cuts and the exploitation of Jobsbridge. These 400,000 people and their families know exactly who is responsible for their forced emigration”.

That’s why, Adams added, “there is no Government Taskforce on emigration. That’s why there is no vote for the diaspora that would give them a stake in our country”.

The golden era of the Celtic Tiger seems so far away, but Adams gave a positive imput to the hundreds of delegates, saying that despite the situation “jobs can and should be created. That’s how we will bring our young people home. And Sinn Fein wants our young people back here in Ireland where they belong”.

But, he warned “Sinn Fein will not make election promises that we cannot keep and Sinn Fein will keep every commitment that we make. That’s a real democratic revolution”.

Adams went on underlining that “Many of the problems that Ireland faces today are a direct result of a toxic political culture, which arose from the counter-revolution that followed the 1916 Rising and the Tan war. The counter-revolutionaries who succeeded Michael Collins, – he said -like their contemporaries in the North, copper-fastened Partition and the two conservative states, which it created”.

In this part of Ireland, the Sinn Féin president said, “this toxic political culture led to the abuses of power in planning, in the banks, in Church and State-run institutions, and in the health service. An elite — politically represented by the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil leaderships, often supported by the Labour Party – oversaw a culture of corruption and golden circles”.

These are the same interests that collapsed the Irish economy six years ago, he said adding: “This corrupt political culture led to scandals such as symphysiotomy, the Neary scandal, the Magadalene laundries, Bethany Home, and to cases like Louise O’Keefe — pursued all the way to Europe by this state, which also intimidated other victims to drop their court cases”.