At a press conference today convened by the United Left Alliance in response to the programme for government agreed by Fine Gael and Labour Joe Higgins, Socialist Party/ULA TD for Dublin West said: "As we predicted, despite the media palaver about Fine Gael and Labour being incompatible they rapidly split the minute differences in their respective manifestos and have presented the public with essentially a continuation of the Fianna Fáíl/Green Party/IMF cuts programme."

The start of new legislation to ease the regulatory burden on co-operative societies and make it easier to start up and run a co-op as an alternative form of enterprise organisation has today been announced by Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Minister Richard Bruton.