Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent)

Today at 8 a.m. I went to the Capuchin Day Centre on Bow Street on the north side of Dublin. A queue of people were waiting for food parcels which they get in blue bags. The Capuchin Day Centre distributes these every Wednesday morning. I spoke to the man who has been running the centre for many years. He told me that in 2008, approximately 50 people used to come on a Wednesday morning. This week approximately 1,400 people will come, almost 30 times more than in 2008. He said that some children come in their school uniforms and arrive out of breath because their parents are rushing them there from school in order that they arrive before dinner closes. He spoke of a new poor, including people from the construction industry and self-employed people who have lost their jobs and businesses and who have become homeless. These people are struggling to pay mortgages and have so little money they cannot feed themselves or their children. This is what austerity means in Ireland today and this is what we must deal with. It is not an economic concept. It amounts to hungry men, women and children on Bow Street.

Without a deal on the bank debt such austerity will get worse in this country. In the past two days we have heard from those responsible in Germany that there will be no deal or write-down on the bank debt. Why is this? Why are the Germans saying this? What do those in Germany see when they look at Ireland? They see a country that pays its senior civil servants more than they pay theirs. They see a country that will award €250 million in pay rises this year while Germany will not. They see a Government that has agreed spending increases throughout the Civil Service from stationery and travel to office rent. They see a Government which sees paying other people's debts as a badge of honour. They see a Government that states publicly that it is not seeking a write-down.

Naturally, those in Germany maintain that they will not entertain a write-down of the €75 billion of private debt that the Irish people are being asked to pay off. Why is this? The Government has failed to make the hard political decisions. The soup kitchen on Bow Street has not seen even a €1 increase in its funding in recent years. Funding has been pulled from severely physically and mentally disabled youth in Wicklow. Under the budget, the Government will take 46 times more money from a lone parent with four children than from a high earner with no children, from whom it is extracting €100. The Government is not increasing higher end income tax because of a misapplication and a misunderstanding of economic theory. The Government is not getting a write-down because it has not yet earned the credibility to do so by making the necessary tough decisions. When the central European powers refer to Ireland, as they did yesterday at a European finance committee meeting, they refer to high wages and to our being bailed out by them. They do not refer to soup kitchens or the €60,000 that every Irish household is paying to the European banking system to stabilise it. The Government must up its game and change the conversation. It must change the view held by the central European powers about what is going on here and what is at stake. We owe it to the people and to the growing numbers in the queues on Bow Street on Wednesday mornings.

See this speech in context