Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

An extremely good cara to the speculators. How can workers take this seriously, against the background of the Government giving €5 billion in tax breaks to speculators and the super-wealthy? At the same time, the Government is now jeopardising 800 workers' jobs in the Great Southern Hotel Group as it prepares to hand the group over to the asset strippers through privatisation. On many occasions over the past eight years, I have debated this issue with the Taoiseach, who has looked upon me as though I was some kind of rare orchid. However, in today's Irish Independent, the economist David McWilliams, who is no revolutionary socialist, makes exactly the same point, namely that the partnership process is, in reality——

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