Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Ceann Comhairle. Any young person unfortunate enough to be watching this spectacle on a flat-screen television or a black and white portable might be somewhat shocked to see the leader of the country before us failing to answer any of the questions put to him. He talked about a €500 million investment in jobs and glossed over the fact that this is an equal sum to the amount he is slashing from the public sector wage bill.

I must admit that over the last while the Tánaiste has come in for a lot of stick about how much he has changed since he went into government. I think that is really quite unfair because I would say he has actually been very true to form. We were told a number of years ago by WikiLeaks exactly the type of operator he is, when he publicly stated he would not stand for a re-run of the Lisbon treaty referendum and then told them that was just political necessity and did something else behind the scenes. I would have to say that his skill for saying one thing and delivering the opposite has been honed into a fine art and replicated by the rest of his team in government.

The Tánaiste talks up the fact the Government has given GP cards to under-fives, but glosses over the fact that it has taken three times that amount off the medical card budget. He boasts about €14 million for a youth guarantee and says nothing about the €32 million the Government is axing from social welfare payments to young people. The Government announced yesterday a pyrite remediation scheme of €10 million as if it were a great leap forward, when it announced the same scheme this time last year - although it was then €50 million - as a first step in dealing with the tens of thousands of houses in that category. The Minister, Deputy Howlin, had the neck to tell us here on Tuesday that past budgets during this Government's term have been progressive. He told us that nobody is ideologically attached to austerity. If they are not ideologically attached to austerity, what is it, then? A coincidence? In fact, the Government has taken more money out of this economy than was even demanded by the troika.

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