Ciarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)

Most Dubliners do not have access to the Luas lines and even if they do, they get stuck in either Connolly Station or at St. Stephen's Green because the lines do not join. That comes down to the Minister's own difficulties in making a commitment to improve public transport.

There is a two-tier system in health care. In Dún Laoghaire, it is all very well for someone who can afford to attend the Blackrock Clinic — many can — but if someone has to go to Loughlinstown Hospital, he or she knows it has the worst record in hygiene in the country.

Standards differ depending on a person's ability to access better health, education or other services. In education, it is fine if someone can afford to attend a fee paying school but attendance at a public school where the pupil-teacher ratio is nowhere near those promised in the programme for Government does not bode well for future prospects. Child care is grand for those who have the time and resources to head off into the tent at the Galway races but a lone parent trying to raise children is stuck in a poverty trap from which there is no way out.

There is a confidence about modern Ireland but there is also a danger of a two-tier society developing where the haves are doing well but those who cannot get on to the first rung of the ladder are consigned to poverty that is almost impossible to overcome.

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