Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

The Minister's response is made up of "on the one hand this and on the other hand that" and the view that we should wait and see. I am calling on the Minister to respond to the alarming but accurate concerns expressed by a major international financial body, the IMF. It is a body that I do not have much time for and whose activities over the years have contributed substantially to the mess we are in now. However, when the head of the IMF states that we may be headed towards a 1930s-style depression, one must take it reasonably seriously. I do not understand why there seems to be no acknowledgment that the rather dramatic downgrading of growth forecasts that has occurred in recent months is precisely as a result of austerity and the cuts in expenditure. It is a consequence of these cuts working their way through in terms of a serious drop in consumer demand and, similarly, a collapse in investment in this country and a drop in investment throughout in Europe. These two things are absolutely connected.

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