Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Workers and Unemployed Action Group)

I am sharing my time with Deputy Mick Wallace.

We have been told time and again by the Government that it received a strong mandate in the recent general election. It has such a mandate and an overwhelming majority, possibly an unhealthily large one. Surely we should tell the truth in this House, the truth being that the public was sold a pup in the general election. The document we are discussing is the same as that presented by the former Government. I said during the general election campaign that I believed there would be little or no difference between the policies pursued by a Fine Gael-Labour Party Government and those pursued by the Fianna Fáil-Green Party Government. From what we have been listening to in the House since the general election, there is no doubt but that this is the case. There is now a grand coalition of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Party, all of which are singing from the same hymn sheet.

We were told it would be "Labour's way or Frankfurt's way". We were told the financial circumstances were an obscenity and that there would be burden sharing. We were told not one red cent more would be given to the banks, yet we are giving them an additional €24 billion. What we are witnessing is the implementation of the programme for Government introduced and pursued by the previous Government. The fundamental principle of the programmes of the current and former Governments is to make ordinary people, including lower income and middle income families and the poor, pay our way out of the recession, a recession in which they had no hand, act nor part in creating.

The other side of the coin is that there has been no taxation of very wealthy people. The super rich in this country, amounting to a figure of 6%, still have €250 billion in assets, but they are not being asked to pay a halfpenny thereon. A 10% windfall tax on these assets would bring in €25 billion and the super rich would still be super rich. There is no doubt that if one had blindfolded oneself while listening to various Ministers in recent weeks, one would have thought one was listening to Ministers from the previous Government. The hymn sheet, story and message are the very same in that they seek to make the ordinary man and woman in the street pay for the gamblers who gambled recklessly and lost. Taxpayers, including lower income and middle income families and the poor, are being made to pay for the reckless gambling losses. I have stated previously in the House that we must have a structured, negotiated default, but that will not be enough. The bondholders must be burned, but this will still not be enough. Together with these steps, there must be reasonable taxation of very wealthy people in this country who have significant assets and are not paying their fair share. We need to tax them urgently; otherwise we are headed towards a catastrophic default that will absolutely destroy Ireland's families, economy and society.

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