John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair and my colleague for bearing with me.

One of the things we did in the last term in the Committee on Budgetary Oversight was make the Government really conscious of equality budgeting. About three years ago, when the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, was Minister for Finance, that was the first time there was a paragraph introduced in it. Ms Murphy's comments are a reminder that it is not something to be taken for granted. The whole idea of that was to prevent the situation of which she speaks, that categories in society are not disproportionately impacted.

Going back to Dr. Healy's comment about the social contract being broken. This would be an interesting study for someone to write because in March 2020, this State entered into and delivered, with knobs on, on the social contract. That is only two and a half short years ago. What prompted that? Because there was this great feeling that the State is protecting everybody, as a constituency Deputy I can look back on that period and say very few constituents, and I have a very varied constituency demographic, had complaints. There was not a huge amounts of complaints about "This is not enough". I cannot recall one person saying "This is not enough". Was it because it was everybody? Was it because the pandemic affected the middle classes, decision-makers, business people? I ask because that is the kind of wraparound of which the State is capable. It demonstrated that it is capable of it. Too often I get the impression, and I am a Government party politician, that the crumbs falling off the table are sufficient for those who are left behind or who are disadvantaged. However I raise the point about the pandemic and how we wrapped our arms around everybody. What was different about that, aside from the catastrophic nature of it? Why can we not sustain that spirit?