LABOUR YOUTH CONFERENCE:THE LABOUR Party will have to make "very hard decisions" if it is to "seize the moment" and build the biggest Labour movement Ireland has ever seen, according to party leader Eamon Gilmore.
Addressing the party's youth conference in Limerick, Mr Gilmore said "there is no barrier to where the Labour Party can go". He wanted to achieve "electoral support on a scale the Labour Party has never before achieved", he told the 80 or so delegates.
"Now is the time for the Labour Party to organise as the Labour Party has never organised before," he said. "The potential exists to forge real and lasting change," he added.
History would ask, "Did we seize the moment for change or did we let it pass?" The election of Barack Obama was "the manifestation of an idea whose time has come". But Mr Obama would never have been elected US president if he had used the same political practices and organisational structures as the Labour Party, Mr Gilmore said. "We have to make the party more efficient and ready for the needs of today." However, "we should develop our own model", he added.
Delegates raised the controversial 21st Century Commission document on the party's future, which proposes sweeping reforms which the unions have opposed, including ending trade union funding and bloc voting.
Mr Gilmore pointed out that five or six of the 55 trade unions in the State were affiliated, and he did not think formal affiliation was a sufficient reason to retain the link. It was not about the Labour Party's view of the trade unions. "The question is: where do the trade unions' members see themselves in relation to the Labour Party?"
Incoming Labour Youth chairman Gary Honer said one of his main priorities was to see as many as possible of the party's young candidates winning in the local elections in June 2009. Outgoing chairman Enda Duffy said youth membership had almost doubled to 1,200 in the past year.
Labour Youth collected €4,000 in fundraising campaigns, and he presented €1,000 each to local election candidates Maria Prody (Ringsend), Dermot Looney (Tallaght Central), Stephen Fitzpatrick (Dún Laoghaire) and outgoing youth officer Cian O'Callaghan (Howth).
Mr O'Callaghan told the conference that the highest attendance previously at a party meeting in Howth was in 1990 when Mary Robinson attended, and there were 40 people present. Last week 150 people attended a party meeting, about a local planning controversy.
Some party members, speaking privately and who declined to be named, complained that a number of party TDs and councillors ran their constituencies "like fiefdoms" and that many talented younger members were excluded, which was why the party's profile was "too old".
When asked about this afterwards, Mr Gilmore said this showed "young members are chomping at the bit". There was always a "tension" between younger and older members. He said party selection procedures allowed it to add candidates to the ticket between now and the local elections.