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

That is the reality. It is going to kill our economy for decades because the Taoiseach never asked for a write-down of a debt that is not ours. Instead he continues to pedal the message here and in Europe that everything is fine, we are not defaulters, we are the good boys and girls of Europe who will do whatever we are told no matter how painful and unjust it is for the population of this country. The evidence that the Taoiseach is not succeeding in any meaningful sense of the word "success" was the mobilisation of our pensioners yesterday who finally spoke out about the truth of what the Taoiseach's Government is doing in imposing measures the impact of which are cruel and cause suffering and anxiety for some of the most vulnerable sectors of our society.

As Deputy Healy said during Leaders' Questions, in that process it is doing enormous damage to the legitimacy of the political institutions of this State as exposed in the quotes given in the House earlier, and I believe on television yesterday, by the Tánaiste, Deputy Gilmore, and the Taoiseach in opposition when they railed against even the suggestion that this would be done to pensioners but who are now doing exactly the measure they railed against. Does the Tánaiste not understand how damaging that is to the credibility of politics?

We should consider the frightening situation developing in places like Greece where such is the level of discrediting of political institutions that there is the rise of fascist and far-right organisations exploiting people's misery and despair and turning it in the most obnoxious directions. The Government is playing with fire. I ask the Tánaiste, as others have asked him, to stand up for the people and for the vulnerable and stop towing the line of these corporate lackeys in the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the troika.

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