A NEW POLITICAL party, calling itself the Anti-Austerity Alliance (AAA) or Triple A, is targeting Labour in the local elections and is planning to run dozens of candidates across the country.

At a media conference in Dublin this afternoon, the AAA said it has 41 candidates who will run in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Laois, Louth, Donegal, Carlow and Kilkenny on 23 May.

The party has been formed off the back of the campaigns against household and water charges with five of those running in May already sitting councillors, including Mick Barry, a Socialist Party councillor in Cork.

“The anti austerity alliance will ask people to use the local elections to deal blow against the latest austerity measure – the water tax,” he said today.

AAA, which was formally registered as a political party last week, advocates taxing the wealthy and estimates that for every one per cent corporation tax is increased a extra €525 million can be yielded.

Barry said that councillors elected on the AAA platform will not vote for any council budget estimate which includes “cutbacks and a tax on living standards of ordinary people”.

AAA includes candidates who are also members of the Socialist Party. Sitting MEP for Dublin Paul Murphy and councillor Ruth Coppinger were in attendance today.

Tommy Houlihan, who is running in Galway, said he is disillusioned with the junior coalition partner, saying: “I voted for Labour in the last election. I believed in them and they have broken every promise they made.”

“I cannot stand idly by throwing my shoe at the television at what’s on the Six-One News,” he added.

Another candidate, Denise Parker, who is running in Balbriggan, said that as a mother of two young boys she felt “pressured and bullied” into paying the property tax.

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