Recent strikes by teachers, Luas and Dublin Bus workers, and the threatened action by gardaí, show that “militancy pays”, Anti-Austerity Alliance TD Mick Barry has told his party’s annual conference.

The Cork North-Central TD cited the water charges protests, the campaign to repeal the Eighth Amendment, pay increases and the pending trials arising from the Jobstown protest in 2014 as key issues.

However, he said the most important issue for the party was ending the “rule of the 1 per cent”.

The conference, held in a Dublin hotel on Saturday and attended by about 150 people, passed motions on a range of matters including nationalising the pharmaceutical industry and, during a session closed to the media, discussed how to create a “mass left party”.

Mr Barry said his party would like to replace capitalism with a system where resources were used for the needs of the people rather than the profits of the few.

He would like to see “the major wealth in society under public ownership and democratic control and that society would decide what are the key priorities”.

‘They sold us out’

Christine Sherry, from Jobstown, said she worked all her life and had always supported the Labour Party. However, three years ago she switched to AAA.

“Labour sold us down the road. I always believed Labour were for the working class but all of a sudden I found they weren’t for the working class. They sold us out,” she said.

“The Anti-Austerity Alliance, for me, they are fighting for people, especially for me, from where I am from. They are fighting for the working class. They understand what people are talking about. When I joined it was the water thing, it was just a bridge too far, for me. Everything in this economy is just going downhill.”

Gbemisola Johnson, from Dublin West, said she supported AAA because it fought for the less privileged. “I deem it fit to even be a member of the party. The Anti-Austerity Alliance stands for the common people.”

Eilis Maher, from Kilkenny, said she was a member because the system had to be challenged. “At the moment it’s weighted towards the one per cent, the millionaires and the billionaires. There is a cabal at the top of Irish society that controls everything.”

In the past, she said, there was a slight trickle down in the economy, now there appeared to be none. “The working class have to pay for everything. We have to suffer and bear the brunt of the austerity measures, and there is no end to that that I can see.”

Private schools

Billy Flynn, from Dublin South-West, said he favoured the nationalisation of key sectors of the economy and was against private medicine, private transport companies, and private ownership of pharmaceutical companies.

He would also like to see an end to private schools. “I can’t see why some kids should have a better education just because they have more money.”

Cillian Gillespie, from Dublin 8, said he would like to see higher taxes on big business and the super-rich, and “the democratic public ownership of the key sectors of the economy.” The private sector had failed to develop the economy “in any real way”.

AAA councillor for Cork North-Central Fiona Ryan said “extreme tax avoidance” was a key issue in her constituency, where Apple has its Irish base.

“We are being told to never expect our fair share of the recovery. Rents are escalating out of control. People my age are being given the choice: be exploited, with precarious jobs, zero-hour contracts and so on, or emigrate.”