Comrades and friends,

On behalf of the Ard Comhairle of the Workers’ Party of Ireland, I would like to wish a happy and prosperous 2026 to all working people, particularly to our members, supporters, and friends.

As ever, 2025 proved to be a tough year for the working class both at home and abroad. In the south, under the rule of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and their lackeys in government, the housing crisis has only worsened. Yet again, we enter the new year with record-breaking numbers of people in emergency homelessness accommodation, a state failing to meet its own housing targets, and an untold number of people struggling to find a place to call their home.

The situation in housing is not a necessary one, and it is not simply the way things have to be or just are. Rather, it is the result of the government deciding to pledge loyalty to the private market instead of the Irish people. Despite all of the evidence and data that points to the contrary, they are ideologically committed to the idea that the private market acts as some sort of inherent force for good and must be protected at all costs. They cannot claim ignorance to the damage done to the working class by virtue of their policies, and yet they stay on this course regardless as it serves to benefit the wealthy.

The cost-of-living crisis also continues on into 2026. Working people can expect an increase in electricity bills, with the stated purpose being to expand the national grid. Why is it that, particularly at a time when electricity companies are making huge profits, this burden is placed on the shoulders of working people? It is fitting for the government to act in a Grinch-like manner, bringing this increase in during the winter months when people will need their electricity and heating the most. Grocery prices remain high when compared to this time last year. No amount of spin or talking about GDP can get away from what working people know to be true when they do their shopping.

Attempts to push Ireland ever closer towards NATO remain present. A motley crew of politicians and columnists, casting reality aside, have done their best to scaremonger and paint a picture of some imminent Russian invasion. This is done in order to please their imperial masters in Washington, Brussels, and London. The government, in exchange for some of the crumbs that fall from the imperialist plate, are willing to pay with the lives of Irishmen and Irishwomen, dying abroad in order to destabilise sovereign nations. That is the mature and responsible thing to do, they insist, but it won’t be them going to the frontlines. It will be the working class, while the armchair generals of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil parrot the NATO line, and their friends write newspaper columns spinning it all as somehow a good thing.

In the north, working people face a reality defined by rising poverty, collapsing public services, and a housing system that increasingly fails those who rely on it. For many families, the new year brings not hope, but anxiety about rent increases, overstretched hospitals, insecure work, and the simple question of how to make ends meet in the months ahead.

Despite record employment figures often cited by politicians, too many workers remain trapped in low-paid, insecure jobs that do not keep pace with the cost of living. Energy bills, food prices, transport costs, and childcare continue to rise, while wages stagnate. In-work poverty is no longer an exception, it is becoming the norm. A growing number of workers rely on food banks, credit, or family support simply to survive, a situation that should shame any society that claims to value work.

Nowhere is this crisis felt more sharply than in our NHS. Chronic underfunding, staff shortages, and burnout have pushed the health service to breaking point. Waiting lists continue to grow, emergency departments remain overwhelmed, and frontline workers are being asked to do more with less year after year. Nurses, doctors, porters, cleaners, and care staff, many of them low-paid, are propping up a system that successive governments have allowed to deteriorate. The result is poorer health outcomes, longer waits, and a workforce stretched to exhaustion.

Alongside this runs a deepening housing crisis, particularly for renters. Rents have soared far beyond wage growth, while social housing supply remains wholly inadequate. Families face eviction with little protection, young workers are locked out of stable housing, and homelessness continues to rise. Housing is increasingly treated as a commodity rather than a basic right, leaving working people paying a disproportionate share of their income simply to keep a roof over their heads.

Yet while these crises intensify, Stormont remains paralysed by politics rooted in the divisions of the past. Too often, debates are framed through the lens of sectarian rivalry rather than societal need. The institutions that should be tackling poverty, housing, and healthcare are instead consumed by constitutional point-scoring and symbolic disputes. Working class communities, made up of Protestants, Catholics, and others, all pay the price for this failure.

The challenges facing workers are not inevitable. They are the result of political choices: to underfund public services, to allow housing costs to spiral, and to prioritise division over delivery. There is an urgent need for a new political direction, one that puts workers’ living standards, public health, and secure housing at the centre of decision-making.

The coming year must be about moving beyond the politics of the past and confronting the realities of the present. Workers deserve more than survival. They deserve dignity, security, and a future worth believing in.

On the international front, Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people continues to unfold before the eyes of the world, with the Zionists enjoying the support of the United States, Britain, and Europe all the while. Israel remains what it was always designed to be: a garrison for Western imperialism in the Middle East, and, if there was ever even any reason to doubt, it is evidently clear that they are willing to wipe a people from the face of the earth in order to secure it. Not only must this genocide come to an end, but the right of the Palestinian people to sovereignty and self-determination must be recognised. 

The United States have also increased their targeting of Venezuela, not only by engaging in piracy by stealing oil tankers off the coast, but more recently by bombing targets on land. These moves are designed to punish Venezuela, like with Cuba and the economic blockade imposed upon it, for daring to walk its own path and refusing to bow to the hegemony of the United States. There are obvious parallels between the present attitude of the United States and the experience of our own country in facing down an imperialist power intent on dominating what they see as their own back garden, as well as the current economic domination of Ireland by the same power attacking Venezuela and Cuba. The Irish working class should recognise that, similarly to our attitudes towards the situation in Palestine, our interest lies in supporting those opposing imperialism in South America and indeed around the world.

Talks continue with regards to a peace deal between Russia and imperialist powers to bring the conflict in Ukraine, ongoing since the installation of Washington’s puppet regime in Kiev in 2014, to a halt. We sincerely hope this conflict comes to an end. That will prove difficult, however, so long as Ukraine continues to be used by the United States to further its own interests in Europe. Further expanding NATO to the east, in contravention to assurances given to Russia in the 1990s, can evidently only serve to add more flames to the fire. Western leaders have no interest in bringing about peace or protecting Europe. Even as Western powers face defeat on one front they are looking to future confrontation with Russia in the Baltic region.

Despite all of the challenges facing working people both at home and abroad in 2025, there are indeed positives that can be taken into 2026.

Although the role may be rather limited in scope, Catherine Connolly’s victory in the 2025 presidential election has acted as an indicator of where many minds are at politically. Prior to and during the campaign, Connolly has been an outspoken critic of the role of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil in creating the ongoing housing crisis and has spoken in opposition to pushing Ireland closer towards NATO. Additionally, she has spoken positively about the prospect of Irish unity, and is a longstanding champion of the Irish language. Connolly’s campaign was endorsed by a wide range of socialist, republican, and progressive parties, including the Workers’ Party, and should act to show those of our political persuasion that there is fertile ground out there for those of us who wish to build a better Ireland.

In this spirit, in 2025, the Workers’ Party and its members have worked alongside other socialists, republicans, trade unionists, and progressives on a number of campaigns. We have supported the establishment of Forward Ireland, a coalition of political, trade union, and community activists coming together to fight for a better Ireland. We have supported the Neutrality Now campaign, dedicated to protecting Irish neutrality and opposing Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil’s attempts to dismantle the triple lock. We have continued working with the Official Republican Movement, particularly on commemorative and cultural events in the north. The fact of the matter is that there are a good number of people spread throughout a good number of organisations with politics that, while differing on some points of nuance, are similar enough that we should be able to work with each other on a regular basis. At a time when the challenges facing our class are so many and so great, and when much of the left has abandoned class politics or relegated it in terms of priorities, those of us who continue to fly the red flag must ensure that we do our utmost to work together.

The Workers’ Party maintains our goal of building up a mass party of the working class, one ultimately capable of constructing a 32-county socialist republic worthy of the legacy of Tone and Connolly. There is a clear need for a party of class politics in Ireland today both north and south, and taking up such a role requires gaining the trust of our class. In order to achieve this, we must undertake to be in constant contact with working class communities everywhere we are organised, active on the issues that matter to them. No issue, from a broken streetlight or bins not being collected in an estate, to opposing the erosion of our neutrality or calling for a citizens’ assembly to discuss the prospect of Irish unity, should be too big or small for our party to campaign on.

Comrades, let us enter 2026 with a renewed commitment to building a better Ireland; a new republic, and to building a better, socialist world. Go raibh maith agaibh.

– Michael McCorry, President of the Workers’ Party