•Universal Public Housing: Create a public construction company which builds non-profit public housing on public land without using income limits when considering eligibility.
•Housing Co-ops: Create a public housing co-op fund and empower credit unions to finance housing co-ops.
•Rent Controls: Create a Rent Index which sets the maximum rent for each property based on a series of factors such as location, BER, age of property, and size.
•Vacancy & Dereliction: Increase vacancy tax and introduce an additional dereliction tax.
•Reduce Speculation: Ban vulture funds, introduce a tax on undeveloped land zoned for housing.
•Full Redress: Implement 100% redress for apartment defects and mica and pyrite defects, and work to recoup costs from developers. Introduce an independent building certification process.
•Improve Sustainability: Replace SEIA Grants with universal retrofit grants to improve BER ratings in any way and mandate rainwater harvesting, with all public homes built to the passivhaus standard.
•Better Planning: Loosen requirements on mobile homes and garden homes, and move towards a reactive and individual objector planning system towards a proactive and collective good system, by introducing participative planning and planning submissions through Community Councils.
•Free Public Transport: Provide every resident with a free public transport card, starting with under 18’s.
•Trams in all cities: Build Luas lines in the regional cities of Waterford, Cork, Limerick, and Galway and create new Luas lines in Dublin.
•Better railways: Build direct lines connecting all cities and large towns on the Island with increased frequency, and plan for high speed rail between Cork-Dublin-Belfast. Electrify and dual all railways in Ireland.
•Active Travel: Connect all towns with greenways and ensure a segregated cycle path network in cities.
•Rural/Urban Busses: Increase frequency and coverage of Local Link and move control from national to local or regional level. Introduce 24/7 buses in all cities.
•Preventative Healthcare: Increased focus on early interventions through primary healthcare.
•Healthcare worker-led HSE: Introduce democracy into the HSE, conducting citizen assemblies of healthcare experts to make collective decisions, and allow healthcare staff to elect their managers, so that management is accountable to healthcare experts. Explore the use of the NHS Foundation Trust model.
•Localised healthcare: Decentralise healthcare to provide larger primary care centres (mini-hospitals) in towns and cities.
•Universal free public healthcare: Expand the medical card to everyone in Ireland by increasing income limits each year. Bring all GPs and Private Hospitals into public control.
•Reform local government to be democratic: Remove undemocratic Council CEOs and allow each council to choose 1 of 3 democratic structures: committee system, cabinet system, or a directly-elected mayor.
•Introduce Participative Planning: Allow residents to democratically, collectively vote on how public money and space is used.
•Replace Seanad with a Citizen’s Seanad: Create a permanent citizen’s assembly to provide recommendations to the Government.
•Introduce Regional Democracy: Create a Provincial Assembly and Provincial Mayor for Munster, Connacht (plus Donegal), Dublin, and Rest of Leinster (plus Monaghan and Cavan).
•Consider Term Limits: Explore the introduction of term limits for TDs and Councillors.
•Link TD Salaries to Median Salary: Ensure that TDs are incentivised to improve the median salary in order to obtain a pay rise.
•Right to work remotely: Allow everyone to work remotely unless the job specifically makes that impossible.
•Pass the Individual Education Plans for Children with Special Needs Bill: By passing this bill, children with special needs will receive tailored support to help them thrive in school and beyond.
•Universal Design of Public Space: Assess all public space to ensure it is accessible enough for everyone.
•Fair Disability Supports: Make major improvements to disability and carers payments.
•Universal Public Toilets: Create a State company called Leithris which coordinates with local councils on constructing new public toilets.
•Tax Wealth: Introduce a wealth tax, increase capital gains tax to be at least equal to income tax, and make local property tax more fair and substantial, in order to reduce wealth inequality.
•Match PRSI that companies pay with EU Levels: Use these to fund proper social supports for sick pay, retraining, and other benefits.
•Introduce a higher rate of income tax: Introduce a higher income tax rate for the highest incomes and remove tax credits for those with the highest incomes, in order to reduce income inequality.
•Expand life skills classes: Introduce cooking and nutrition classes, and emotional intelligence and critical thinking classes for all students throughout primary and secondary.
•Reform the Leaving Cert: Increase use of continuous assessment and allow students to repeat individual subjects.
•Truly Free Education: Remove third level fees, pay for all student lunches and uniforms in primary and secondary, ban voluntary contributions.
•Encourage Trades: Fund manual labour training and support construction and trades co-ops.
•Improve Civic Education: Reform CSPE and SPHE to provide holistic education about individual and collective behaviour and how our politics, economy, and society function.
•Create Council Clubs: Give councils funding to create local non-profit public gym, pool, and leisure companies.
•More public parks: CPO unused private land to create more public space and parks with outdoor gyms and physical activity spaces, and hire landscapers to improve the look of public green areas.
•Fund activities: Massively increase funding to sports clubs and other social activities.
•Expand Hot Meals: Offer universal free breakfasts and lunches for those under 18 who want it, during the school year and over school breaks. Ensure the hot meals are provided by a non-profit company focused on healthy eating.
•Free Public Childcare: Create public childcare centres with universal free access from 1 until school age.
•Free Public Social Care: Provide free care at home (with access to respite), in communal estates, and in public nursing homes.
•Care Co-ops: upport care co-ops which democratically empower the cared-for and carers alike.
•Remove time limits on diagnoses: Remove the temporary nature of dyslexia and other diagnoses, in order to stop requiring people to get multiple diagnoses for the same life-long condition.
•Introduce Universal Carers Allowance: Ensure that all carers receive a universal allowance which takes account of the individual circumstances of the carer and the cared-for.
•Support Indigenous Companies: Use a mix of direct grants and tax credits to support Irish companies which operate entirely within Ireland or have full ownership by Irish residents.
•Dual Currency Assessment: Explore the pros and cons of introducing a limited dual currency for some transactions, to improve fiscal flexibility during downturns.
•Introduce Progressive Taxation on Businesses: Reform taxes to help smaller businesses more as they require the most support.
•Build Community Wealth: Use public institution tendering to build the local, public, social, co-op and non-profit economies in Ireland.
•Provide Non-Profit Competition: Create a public, non-profit company in any industries where Capitalism generates the highest profits at the expense of citizens and businesses, especially insurance, banking, and energy.
•Empower GSOC: Improve mandate of GSOC to provide greater scrutiny of Garda matters.
•Promote alternatives to prison: Legislate, resource and support alternative responses to prison for people who offend.
•Introduce Community Councils: Create a level of government below local government, with funding and powers to organise events and build community, as well as holding local services to account.
•Promote pro-Community Public Planning & Design: ensure that future development plans prioritise planning and design which encourages community building, such as high-density, mixed-use, and lots of public space.
•Encourage Community Work: Incentivise volunteer work throughout all stages of life.
•Ban recommender systems: Force social networks to return to ‘most recent’ feeds based on who the user chooses to follow, instead of the newer ‘top posts’ feed which highlights hateful/extremist content and robs the user of control over what they see online.
•Support Non-Profit Social Networks: Create profiles for all public entities on Mastodon and promote its use.
•Launch Public Community Social Media: Create a council-owned neighbourhood social media based on NextDoor and Vermont’s ‘Front Porch Forum’.
•Universal Basic Income for Artists: Expand the basic income for artists to include game developers and other artistic sectors, as well as moving from a lottery system to a universal one.
•Open municipal museums: Provide local councils funding to create local museums, with a focus on heritage and the Irish culture and language.
•Universal Free Irish Classes: Provide universal free public language classes to teach Irish to people of any age, based on best-practice with Catalan.
•Extend nightlife opening hours: Allow bars to open until 2am and nightclubs to open until 6am, to bring Ireland in line with the rest of Europe.
•Introduce 4 day work week:: Implement a reduced working week to give workers more free time to thrive.
•Increase post-2011 Public Sector Pay: Reverse the pay reductions for public sector workers who began working after 2011.
•Give Workers First Right of Refusal: Allow unions to engage in politics, be empowered to bargain collectively, and join the rest of the world in offering the human right of mandatory union recognition.
•Improve Worker Conditions: Remove the 2 year limit for redundancy and improve protections during a shorter probationary period.
•Invest in Addiction Services: Properly fund local mental health and addiction services with a focus on reducing cocaine use.
•Legislate for Cannabis Clubs: Allow non-profit cannabis social clubs and co-ops for over 21s based on the Spanish and German models.
•Decriminalise All Drugs for Personal Use: Implement the Citizens’ Assembly recommendation to decriminalise use and possession of all drugs - while keeping sale illegal - based on best practice and proven success in reducing drug harms in Portugal and elsewhere.
•Support direct purchase of produce: Shorten supply chains by promoting consumption of local produce.
•Reverse Intensification: Move towards diversification and support for crops and other more sustainable produce
•Support Alternative Agriculture: Provide financial supports for agro-ecology, agroforestry, and permaculture.
•Support Young Farmers: Provide payments to ensure that young farmers stay in the essential profession.
•Improve Farmer Salaries: Push the EU to implement CAP convergence and offer specific grants for smaller farmers, especially ones prioritising environmental practices.
•Reduce Industrial Farming: Stop megafarms undercutting our family farms by tailoring taxation and supports to rebalance the farming industry.
•Break Up Processor Cartel: Introduce new processor co-ops and mandate price transparency to ensure that farmers get a fair price for produce.
•Abolish TV License: Remove the regressive cost and replace it with progressive and fair funding.
•Strengthen Local Media: Provide grants for local non-profit independent newspapers and radio.
•Support Media Co-ops: Implement grants for reader-owned media co-ops and enterprises such as Newsworthy.ie.
•Decentralise Public News: Create public regional and local media companies and stop RTÉ News being primarily based in and focused on Dublin.
•Create a non-profit state bank: Provide non-profit mortgages and loans in a market to increase competition and reduce prices.
•Empower Credit Unions: Remove arbitrary reserve limits and provide more financial backing.
•Expand Start-up Grants: Increase supports for new businesses in order to improve viability.
•Increase Financial Transparency: Mandate that all large companies must submit annual financial support to a public government website.
•End Public Funding for Greyhound & Horse Racing: Ensure that no public support is provided for these sports.
•Increase inspections: Ensure that any industry involving animals faces regular inspections to ensure animal welfare is being upheld.
•Ban Animal Harms: Ban fox hunting, hare coursing, puppy farms, and the mistreatment of animals.
•Revive our Rainforests: Redirect Coillte to revive our temperate rainforests, starting with forest rings around cities and towns.
•Expand Public Access: Ensure that much more land in Ireland is made up of public protected National Parks and implement the Right to Roam based on the standard practice in Scotland and the Nordic countries.
•Create Nature Corridors: Connect nature through corridors running through cities and towns.
•Support Ukraine & Palestine: Pass the Occupied Territories Bill and implement B.D.S. against Russia and Israel into law for all public bodies. Push for and offer to host peace talks which respect internationally-agreed borders.
•Strengthen our Neutrality: Organise a Citizen’s Assembly and then a referendum on enshrining military neutrality in our constitution. Stop US flights in Shannon, stop any involvement with NATO, and retain the triple-lock.
•Empower the UN: Support efforts to strengthen the UN General Assembly and increase funding.
•Protect Tenants’ Deposits: Create tenancy deposit schemes to hold deposits.
•Recognise Right to Own Pets & Decorate: Allow all tenants to have pets and make minor alterations to their rental properties, based on best-practice in other European countries.
•Ban No-Fault Evictions: Only allow evictions in specific cases, like in the rest of the EU.
•Strengthen right to peacefully protest: Conduct a review into the right to peacefully protest and how to better protect it.
•Criminalise Classism: Amend Equality Act to include class as a protected characteristic, based on the pre-existing protection in the European Convention of Human Rights.
•Enshrine Right To Die: Allow euthanasia in specific circumstances.
•Ban Intersex Mutilation: Ban all forms of intersex surgery without informed consent.
•Lower Voting to 16: Allow 16 and 17 year olds to vote in all elections.
•Automatic Voter Registration: Automatically add people to the electoral roll upon reaching voting age.
•Expand the Franchise: Allow people to vote by post, including from abroad for up to 5 years after emigrating, and allow all residents to vote in all elections.
•Empower Democratic Consent: Introduce recall petitions for TDs and Councillors, and allow petitions to call a referendum or create a citizen’s assembly.
•Restrict Data Centres: Mandate data centre companies to build 110% of their energy needs in renewables in order to gain planning permission.
•Improve Public Energy: Reform ESB as a non-profit focused entirely on renewable energy generation.
•Support Renewable Energy Co-ops: Provide finance and grants to communities who want to start solar, hydroelectric, or wind renewable energy co-ops.
•Replace EU Commission: Push for an EU Commission to be composed of MEPs only, with a mandated balance between member states and parties.
•Create a Social EU: Support Left-wing parties around Europe in making an EU which focuses on social growth instead of market growth.
•Expand the EU: Welcome Ukraine, the Balkans, Moldova, Georgia into the EU, and support the UK, Norway, and Switzerland in all moves towards closer alignment.
•Expand access to cross-border media: Ensure that TV, radio, and other cultural media are available on both sides of the border.
•Prepare for Unification: Hold citizen’s assemblies and other preparations for a border poll to be held in the coming years.
•Protect British Culture: Promote Ulster Scots and other aspects of Unionist culture in the Republic.
•Prioritise Benefits over Symbols: Be willing to change flags and anthems in order to maximise the chance of a border poll passing with the consent of British people on the island.
•Cleaner Air: Implement proper air filtration in hospitals and schools, and introduce a ‘fresh air’ campaign for all buildings and transport. Set up air quality monitors throughout towns and cities and provide open access to data.
•Cleaner Water: Invest in segregated sewage infrastructure, and improve access to water and water inspections. Hold a referendum on the Right to Water and giving legal protections to nature.
•Cleaner Streets: Return bin collection to council control and make waste access universal and unconditional.
•Introduce Gender Quotas at Local Elections: Expand gender quotas to local level to ensure more equal representation.
•Equal Paid Parental Leave: Mandate 1 year paid parental leave, with at least half needing to be taken by each partner.
•Decriminalise Sex Work: Empower the voices of sex workers who call for decriminalisation in order to maximise their safety, while ensuring pathways to exit the profession.
•Build up Gendered Support Services: Assess the gendered aspects of loneliness and suicidal ideation and create wrap-around support services and social groups and activities to account for this.
•Remove Church from Public Institutions: Ensure that the state, not the Catholic Church, has ownership and control over education and healthcare. Ensure that all religious teaching takes place outside of school hours.
•Citizens Assembly on Secularism: Launch a convention to make recommendations on making our constitution and laws secular.
•Ensure Proper Redress: Explore the option of expropriating Church assets in Ireland to pay victims and survivors, if proper reparations aren’t provided.
•Empower Regional Governments: Devolve healthcare and industrial policy powers from national to a new regional level with elected Provincial Mayors and Provincial Assemblies.
•Ensure Proportionality: Implement a law which promotes constituencies with more seats, to better represent people democratically.
•Grow Regional Cities & Towns: Plan to grow the regional cities of Cork, Waterford, Limerick, and Galway, as well as the towns of Sligo, Athlone, Longfor, and Kilkenny, in order to provide a counterbalance to Dublin.
We All Thrive is a platform which allows anyone and everyone to suggest any ideas to add to a Shared Manifesto for the upcoming General Election.
These ideas can be as simple as adding a public park to your local area, or as complex as altering the capital gains tax system in order to reduce inequality. Any and every idea is valued and the more people who get involved, the better! We encourage everyone to add as much detail and as many references/links as possible, and to be as ambitious and creative as can!
Despite the Shared Manifesto being created, all ideas will continue to be gathered and considered by all candidates who sign up to run on the We All Thrive Shared Manifesto, to allow the Shared Manifesto to be a living plan. When considering ideas, candidates will ensure that the ideas align with the main aims of the platform (as stated at the top of the page) and don't fundamentally contradict the views or specific campaigns of all candidates involved. This will ensure that the vision of the final Shared Manifesto remains coherent, while empowering the views of everyday voters in an open and democratic way.
We All Thrive is not a political party; any candidates involved have full autonomy to focus on what they and voters in their area would like to focus on throughout the election. If any candidates are successful in being elected, there will be no party whip or other form of inter-candidate control - the voters themselves will hold the candidates accountable to promises that they made during the campaign; We All Thrive is a platform which empowers voters to tell candidates what they would like to see most, and is built on trust that the candidates will be true to their values once elected. We All Thrive is completely distinct from any post-election collaboration.
As we face a large list of crises caused by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, it is essential that any progressive, left-wing, and pro-localism candidates present a unified alternative and radical vision. This vision must be backed up by an extensive programme of transitional measures towards transformative change.
People have had enough of minor market tweaks and pure oppositional politics, and it is the responsibility of all those who oppose the status quo, to present a positive and distinct vision, as well as clear steps to reach this vision.
For any plan radical enough to solve the many crises we face to obtain the major democratic legitimacy required to popularise and implement, it must be co-created with everyone it impacts. By empowering workers, carers, and all in the community to speak up about what we need to thrive, major systemic improvements previously considered unrealistic can begin to be popularised. Despite this being the first time that this open democratic approach is used in Ireland, it has been massively successful all around the world, and will allow us to popularise a radical programme for change, co-created with all in a democratic way.
Independent Egalitarian Socialist Candidate for Limerick County
April Sheehan Corkery is a disabled part time horse & pony breeder from the village of Hospital in county Limerick. She is passionate about agroecology & regenerative agriculture, as well as preserving our native breeds & native biodiversity without crucifying farmers & rural people.
She is anti state & anti capitalist (syndicalist) & envisions a completely different economic model for Ireland based on starting a sustainable agricultural revolution leading into an eco Industrial Revolution & pivoting our economy away from reliance on multinationals.
She is also passionate about workers rights & worker owned enterprise (participatory economics) her views on geopolitics is based in a keen interest in human rights in general as well as anti colonialism & anti-imperialism.
Contact April at aprilmariasheehancorkery@gmail.com
Links:
Progressive Independent Candidate for Longford-Westmeath
Louise Heavin is an Independent candidate for Longford-Westmeath, and a passionate advocate for sustainable living, equitable communities, and meaningful progress in our society.
With experience as the former Mayor of Athlone and a strong background in housing and sustainable development, Louise is committed to bringing about real, tangible change for the people of her constituency.
She believes in listening, collaborating, and making practical, impactful decisions that serve everyone. As someone deeply rooted in her community, Louise is determined to work toward a future where everyone has the support and resources they need to thrive.
Links:
Progressive Independent Candidate for Dublin Fingal West
John is a long and ardent campaigner in communities, and has been active in campaigns on housing, cost of living crisis, integration/inclusion, and addressing and promoting diversity. He is passionate about his constituency and wants to give it a strong voice in the next Dáil.
He believes in Dublin Fingal and wants to addres the urgent issues that we all face. His priorities include building public housing on public land, healthcare, childcare, social ammenities, and climate and transport.
The coalition partners of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and the Greens have not deleivered for ordinary people. Vote credible representatives that will have the interests of the people, the working class, and struggling families in this country.
Links:
Progressive Independent Candidate for Waterford
Killian is from Butlerstown and went to primary school there before going to secondary in Tramore. After finishing school, Killian studied comptuer game design in Glasgow and worked in both Barcelona and Edinburgh.
In Scotland, Killian dedicated a lot of my free time to both electoral politics and political activism, learning a massive amount through my work fighting for tenants’ rights in Scotland’s housing crisis as an active member of Scottish tenants’ union Living Rent. In recent years, Killian has been actively engaged in politics in Waterford at a local and national level.
Killian also helped to found the Waterford Branch of CATU (Community Action Tenants’ Union) and serves as the Comms Officer. He is also active in the pro-diversity group Waterford For All. He also previously participated in the ACTC (Anti-Conversion Therapy Coalition), a cross-party, all-island group lobbying the governments on this island to ban conversion therapy. In a free time, Killian also leads a remote-work game development company structured as a democratic worker co-operative called Quarant Inc., working on and releasing multiple games in recent years.
With a history of IBS and anxiety, Killian is a keen advocate for accessibility in society, and co-ordinated a written response to the Government green paper on disability allowance reform. He has a significant interest in designing better and accessible public spaces, providing more public amenities, and improving tenants’ rights.
As a progressive candidate, Killian aspires to help popularise a democratic market economy; public, non-profit, and co-operative companies operating in a democratic market with a fair balance between competition and cooperation based on the concept that “a rising tide raises all boats”. This economic model has already achieved huge success in sustainable economic growth without increasing inequality in the Basque Country in Spain, as well as creating the only housing system in the West which has avoided a housing crisis in Vienna, Austria. Killian also a keen believer in universal services and progressive taxation, as well as democratic reform and localism.
Contact Killian on 085 156167 or killianmangan@gmail.com
Links:
English Leaflet ~ Irish Leaflet ~ Facebook ~ Instagram ~ Twitter ~ Reddit ~ Bluesky ~ Mastodon ~ TikTok ~ Youtube ~ Donate
Progressive Independent Candidate for Dublin Mid-West
Seanán is 44 years of age and is originally from Kilcock in County Kildare. He lives in Newcastle, County Dublin. He works as a Communications Executive for the Food Safety Authority of Ireland.
He is a graduate from the University of Limerick, where he read history and politics. Mr. Ó Coistín is like many voters in the area who are finding it difficult sometimes to live in a very expensive city and then suffer the problems such as a lack of housing and traffic jams due to the lack of proper public transport.
He has positions on a range of issues from air defence to national reunification to housing, new schools, public transport, the Irish language, education policies, sports and youth programmes and amenities for young people living in the suburban areas in Dublin Mid-west.
It is Seanán's strong belief that many of the problems which voters in his constituency face are due to poor planning.
Over the years, Seanán has been volunteered for various organisations including Foróige in Kilcock. He was a director and volunteer for the anti-racism organisation Show Racism the Red Card. As a supporter of democracy and human rights, he was from 2009 to 2012 a committee member of Burma Action Ireland, the organisation in Ireland that helped the campaign for democracy in Burma. Most Saturdays, Seanán also helps with the Newcastle Tidy Towns group.
Contact Seanán on seanan@seanan.info
Links:
Unlike the We All Thrive Shared Manifesto, the We All Thrive Pledge is not a detailed list of policies, but a commitment for candidates, if elected, to promote the We All Thrive vision:
Candidates who have signed the pledge:
•Oghenetano John Uwhumiakpor (Independent) - Dublin Fingal West
•Killian Mangan (Independent) - Waterford
•Louise Heavin (Independent) - Longford-Westmeath
•Evie Nevin (Labour) - Cork South West
•Tom Healy (Independent) - Carlow-Kilkenny
If you have any IT issues, please contact IT@weallthrive.ie.
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