A joint motion in the name of the Sinn Féin and Labour TDs has called for action to address the worsening crisis in housing and the rising level of homelessness. Numbers on local authority waiting lists have risen by more than 30% in three years, an estimated 5,000 people are homeless and there has been a significant rise in repossessions orders for family homes in the courts. Free article

The way that the Irish 'No' vote has been dealt with "is not creating goodwill", Sinn Féin MEP Bairbre de Brún (left) has told the EU Parliament and she warned that "it could even fuel opposition to the EU". Free article

LIFELONG republican BOBBY STOREY has been involved in the struggle for well over 30 years, having been interrogated, brutalised and imprisoned for 20 years, most of which time was spent on remand. Bobby is at home in any site of republican struggle and he talks to ELLA O'DWYER about the route through that struggle which brought him to become the new chairperson of Belfast Sinn Féin. Free article

NEXT year will mark the centenary of the foundation of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, the forerunner of SIPTU, Ireland's largest trade union with more than 200,000 members. SIPTU's general president Jack O'Connor spoke to An Phoblacht's Emma Clancy this week about the union's plans to celebrate 100 years of fighting for workers' rights and the key challenges facing the trade union movement today. Free article

SPEAKING during a debate in the North's Assembly this week on the impact of the global economic downturn, Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams commended the 'efforts of the Executive in bringing forward measures to strengthen the local economy, to protect the most vulnerable in our society, and to alleviate hardship.' Free article

THIS interview with DAWN PURVIS is the first-ever given to An Phoblacht by a leader of the Progressive Unionist Party, often described as the political voice of the unionist paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force. Free article

JOHN THOMAS has taken part in some extraordinary events. He spent over 16 years in prison, five of them on the Blanket, for his involvement in the IRA but says he wouldn't change a thing - except maybe getting caught! Free article

WORKING at his desk, Bob Cratchit tries to keep warm by cradling a lighted candle between his hands. His clerk's wages are insufficient to keep him warm or his family well fed and his children's lives are destined to be blighted by poverty. It's a vision of indifferent private profit enjoyed by the few and inadequate wages and indebtedness endured by the rest. Free article