Inflation continues its upward path this month, as the latest CSO release shows mortgage interest costs, rental costs and diesel prices rising sharply. For workers with high housing and transport costs, the pinch is now really starting to bite; militant pay bargaining, not just across the public but also the private sector, is needed. To that end, the Industrial Committee supports SIPTU members at FedEx Dublin pursuing pay demands that protect and improve their class interests against their niggardly American employer. The Labour Court’s current recommendation of just a 4% annual increase in this dispute illustrates the wider problem facing workers: settlements must address rising prices and accumulated losses in living standards, with provisions to protect wages if inflation accelerates further. Inflation-busting pay deals are essential, but substantial improvements in living standards require confronting the costs of housing, transport and other basic services.
While Irish capitalism is not in crisis, it is now locked into the AI investment mania. As a recent ESRI analysis shows, surging investment in computing infrastructure and related trade is drawing the Irish economy more deeply into this global expansion. It is also importing new sources of financial volatility, with greater exposure to this speculative investment cycle and the possibility of a sharp reversal if, and more likely when, the boom falters.
Until then, Irish capitalism continues to service the capitalist class very well. October’s CSO National Accounts show that in the second quarter of 2026, non-financial corporations recorded €83.7 billion in this country, with handsome dividends and reinvested earnings of €64.4 billion. All of this dwarfs the share accruing to labour in the sector at €29.2 billion. How much of the enormous value produced (or booked) here becomes a sustained basis for domestic employment, public revenues and improvements in our living standards? How much is siphoned off to the international capitalist class?
Working in Ireland
A recent survey of the Irish working population, Working in Ireland, found that “[b]etween 13% and 32% of employees have low weekly earnings, depending on the threshold used. Almost one in four (23.4%) earn less than two-thirds of the median weekly wage, the conventional measure of low pay. Almost one in three (31.6%) in a full-time job earn less than the Real Living Wage would pay, the test of whether earnings are enough to live on … Women are hit hardest. Almost one in three women are low paid as against 17% of men. And low pay is concentrated primarily among women: women make up two-thirds of the low paid.” At the point of production, nearly a third of workers report using AI at work, but that its consequence is merely the undertaking of more work. Under capitalist control, technological gains frequently become a means for increasing workloads and extracting more labour within the working day. Any industrial response to the new technology should include bargaining over staffing, workloads, surveillance and working time. Productivity gains should support higher wages, shorter hours and improved conditions. Achieving that requires workers to exercise collective influence over how technology is introduced and used, and to move the bargaining arena beyond just pay.
Fiscal Crisis of the Northern Statelet
The now annual confrontations over public sector wages in health, education and elsewhere across the North expose the limitations of the statelet. Essential services remain dependent on funding decisions made at Westminster, while Stormont lacks the economic power and productive foundations to overcome this dependence. The result is a recurring cycle of budgetary confrontation, delayed pay awards and deteriorating provision. Public sector workers and indeed the wider working class are expected to absorb the consequences. For organised labour, this provokes questions extending beyond the immediate funding settlement that characterises the current budgetary crisis. How can arrangements that repeatedly subordinate the needs of northern Irish people to decisions taken elsewhere guarantee secure wages and properly funded services? Workers must demand the resources required now, to be sure, but the labour movement would do well to really engage with how partition further constrains economic development and democratic control. The case for an all-Ireland alternative must connect constitutional change to a concrete programme for employment, public investment and universal services.
