Publishing Guide

Upcoming Events

National | Rights, Freedoms and Repression

no events match your query!

New Events

22 Mar [Dublin] National Demonstration for Palestine: End...

more >>

Other Press

Rights, Freedoms and Repression

Woman whose soup run fed 250 homeless in Dublin told to cease or face €300k fine 21:35 Feb 07 2 comments

Germany cannot give up it's Nazi past - Germany orders Holocaust survivor institutionalized over Cov... 23:31 Jan 14 1 comments

Crisis in America: Deaths Up 40% Among Those Aged 18-64 Based on Life Insurance Claims for 2021 Afte... 23:16 Jan 06 0 comments

Protests over post-vaccination deaths spread across South Korea 23:18 Dec 26 0 comments

Chris Hedges: The execution of Julian Assange 22:19 Dec 19 1 comments

more >>

User Preferences

Feeds

Blog Feeds

Anti-Empire

North Korea Increases Aid to Russia, Mos... Tue Nov 19, 2024 12:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

Trump Assembles a War Cabinet Sat Nov 16, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

Slavgrinder Ramps Up Into Overdrive Tue Nov 12, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

?Existential? Culling to Continue on Com... Mon Nov 11, 2024 10:28 | Marko Marjanovi?

US to Deploy Military Contractors to Ukr... Sun Nov 10, 2024 02:37 | Field Empty

Human Rights in Ireland

Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.

Trump hosts former head of Syrian Al-Qaeda Al-Jolani to the White House Tue Nov 11, 2025 22:01 | imc

Rip The Chicken Tree - 1800s - 2025 Tue Nov 04, 2025 03:40 | Mark

Study of 1.7 Million Children: Heart Damage Only Found in Covid-Vaxxed Kids Sat Nov 01, 2025 00:44 | imc

The Golden Haro Fri Oct 31, 2025 12:39 | Paul Ryan

Top Scientists Confirm Covid Shots Cause Heart Attacks in Children Sun Oct 05, 2025 21:31 | imc

Human Rights in Ireland >>

Lockdown Skeptics

People are Leaving Britain in Droves, We Face a ?Growth Emergency? and Labour?s Tax Bonanza is Drivi... Mon Nov 24, 2025 15:36 | Will Jones
People are leaving Britain in droves, we face a "growth emergency" and Labour's tax bonanza is driving wealth out of Britain, Business Secretary Peter Kyle has said in an extraordinary admission.
The post People are Leaving Britain in Droves, We Face a “Growth Emergency” and Labour’s Tax Bonanza is Driving Wealth out of Britain, Admits Business Secretary appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

The Covid Inquiry Has Failed to Ask the Most Basic Question: Why Were People Dying? Mon Nov 24, 2025 13:29 | Dr Andrew Bamji
The Covid Inquiry has failed to ask the most basic question: why were people dying, says Dr Andrew Bamji ? a clinician who correctly adduced the answer in April 2020 and brought it to SAGE's attention, but was ignored.
The post The Covid Inquiry Has Failed to Ask the Most Basic Question: Why Were People Dying? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Europe?s Wind Turbine Industry Faces Ruin at Hands of Coal-Powered Chinese, Experts Warn Mon Nov 24, 2025 11:21 | Will Jones
Europe's wind turbine industry faces ruin because the Chinese are using coal and state subsidies to massively undercut the European market, making turbines for a third of the cost, experts have warned.
The post Europe’s Wind Turbine Industry Faces Ruin at Hands of Coal-Powered Chinese, Experts Warn appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Fake Famine Fears at the Collapsed COP30 Fuel Net Zero Fantasy Mon Nov 24, 2025 09:00 | Chris Morrison
Promising famines while pushing the 'Great Leap Forward' of Net Zero is just one reason why this deluded elite COP30 gathering crumbled under its own sinister contradictions, says the Daily Sceptic's Environment Editor.
The post Fake Famine Fears at the Collapsed COP30 Fuel Net Zero Fantasy appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

A Kind of Magic: Exposing the?Miraculous, Planet-Healing??Science? of World Kindness Day Mon Nov 24, 2025 07:00 | Steven Tucker
World Kindness Day claims kindness heals the planet, but really it's just schools and universities turning soppy fluff into pseudo-science ? Steven Tucker gives his take on the feel-good cult nobody asked for.
The post A Kind of Magic: Exposing the?Miraculous, Planet-Healing??Science? of World Kindness Day appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Lockdown Skeptics >>

Voltaire Network

Voltaire, international edition

Will intergovernmental institutions withstand the end of the "American Empire"?,... Sat Apr 05, 2025 07:15 | en

Voltaire, International Newsletter N?127 Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:38 | en

Disintegration of Western democracy begins in France Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:00 | en

Voltaire, International Newsletter N?126 Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:39 | en

The International Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism by Amichai Chikli and Na... Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:31 | en

Voltaire Network >>

Ireland in breach of UN Forced Labour Convention

national | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis

Saturday February 20, 2016 10:07

by Vince McGreal

Report this post to the editors

In 1932, Ireland ratified the United Nations’ Convention Concerning Forced or Compulsory Labour (1930). The Convention defines forced labour as "all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily.”
Eighty-four years later, Ireland is in breach of that convention.

In 2012, Pathways to Work policy statement, largely copied from the UK, was adopted and signed, among others, by Enda Kenny and Joan Burton. Apart from providing training and education for the unemployed, which have been available long before 2012, the activation system offers them not real jobs but year-long JobBridge “internships” and “apprenticeships” as cleaners and porters. Such offers of practically unpaid (a little more than one euro an hour) work disguised as training now cannot be refused, because they are backed up with sanctions: it can be either a cut of €44 from the weekly €188, or even the suspension of payments for up to nine weeks, which exposes people to starvation, hypothermia and debt. These are the penalties for not volunteering to do unpaid work for businesses, or an analogue of community service on the Gateway and Tús schemes that include cleaning and renovating council-owned buildings and parks. One previously had to commit an offence to be sentenced to this!

Incredibly, this matter hasn’t yet become a major issue in the general election campaign. The mainstream politicians are seemingly happy to allow such treatment of their own countrymen to continue. We are about to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the Easter Rising, but the society plagued with forced labour is not exactly what the heroes of 1916 fought for. Officially, people pressed into doing unpaid work are classed as employed, so the unemployment rate falls. One may think that we are trying to imitate the Roman Empire where all were happily employed – as either slave owners or slaves.

Add Your Comments >>

printable version

with comments

atom feed of comments

rss feed of comments

RSS and atom feeds allow you to keep track of new comments on particular stories. You can input the URL's from these links into a rss reader and you will be informed whenever somebody posts a new comment.

Digg this

Furl

Reddit

Gab

Twitter

© 2001-2025 Independent Media Centre Ireland. Unless otherwise stated by the author, all content is free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere. Opinions are those of the contributors and are not necessarily endorsed by Independent Media Centre Ireland. Disclaimer | Privacy