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

While the Taoiseach was announcing the new ministerial positions, I was attending a protest with about 20 families who are on the housing list. They are either homeless or about to be made homeless, or they have been on the waiting list for ten or 15 years. All of them are in dire straits. They are just a small example of the hundreds of thousands of families who are suffering cruelly. Frankly, the sham drama of this Cabinet reshuffle will mean absolutely nothing to them unless it signifies a radical shift in policy. We should remember that the reason this reshuffle is happening is that the Government, particularly the Labour Party, took a hammering in the local and European elections. They took a hammering because of property tax, water charges, cruel and savage cuts to some of the most vulnerable sectors of our society, and an unprecedented housing and homelessness crisis that is the worst we have seen in the State's modern history. The new Labour Party leader has her fingerprints all over some of those cuts. They include the cuts to rent allowance, which have resulted in the housing crisis, and cuts in the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance, the fuel allowance and child benefit. Those cuts have directly contributed to the suffering of families out there. They want to know if the new guard will do anything about those things. Will they abolish the unfair and regressive property tax? Will they abandon plans for water charges? Will they reverse the cruel cuts imposed on the young, the old, the disabled, the homeless or those threatened with homelessness? There is nothing in today's discussion that has alluded to the need for urgent and radical action to deal with those things. That is all that matters to people.

I do not see any sign of a commitment to policy change to shift the burden away from those who are suffering and cannot take any more. If the Government does not address the inequality and unfairness that have been the products of this brutal austerity regime, then all of this means nothing, and it will not save the Labour Party or Fine Gael from further electoral devastation at a future poll.

That is the challenge. That is what people are interested in. All of this is just pure theatre. I take no pleasure in saying that but one comes away from families who are suffering. I know of a member of one family who has just been taken to hospital because there are 14 people in a two-bedroom house. The mother has just been taken to hospital, a child is sick and the family has been on the list for 12 or 15 years. That is what the Government needs to address.

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