Responding to the Sinn Fein document, Paddy stated:
“Sinn Fein has simply outlined the same old failed strategy of tax breaks and subsidies for big business. It has not worked and it will not work now. Multinationals attracted by huge handouts from Invest NI will disappear as soon as the subsidies dry up. HCL – which received £5.5 million in public subsidies – is now threatening its workforce with the sack if they don’t accept huge attacks on their conditions.”
“Sinn Fein are hypocrites. The cuts they have signed up to will throw 40,000 people on the dole. Sinn Fein talk of ‘harmonising tax’ across Ireland- this means slashing corporation tax in the North, transferring millions directly from public services into the profits of big business.”
“The idea that the Assembly can come to an ‘agreement’ with the top banks to make them pay a ‘contribution’ to the recovery is insulting. These banks received over a £1 trillion of our money, and Sinn Fein wants them to pay a paltry £25 million a year. The Socialist Party says that the banks should be taken fully into public ownership and used to fund a program to create socially useful Jobs, such as investing in building new schools and hospitals, upgrading our water service and training new teachers and nurses.”