Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

On RTE, the Taoiseach made the point that one of the problems he had in the 1990s was with expensive legal fees as a result of issues in which he was involved. Many Independent Deputies have made the point to me in recent days that constituents of theirs facing the same fees were not able to proceed to the courts to try to get the justice they deserved because they could not afford the fees being charged. In the powerful position he had in Government would it not have been a more appropriate response for the Taoiseach, rather than take a hand-out from very wealthy friends, to have taken steps to curb the obscene level of fees a section of the Law Library charges ordinary people as they try to get justice?

The Taoiseach also brought £50,000 worth of savings into the story. Why did he bring this into the public domain? Was it because a sum of £50,000 was deposited on one occasion when he eventually opened a bank account and the tribunal asked him to explain it? If so, how did he accumulate that massive amount of £50,000? Did he accumulate it in cash and keep it in a shoebox as it grew month by month, year by year? Does he not believe it was extremely incongruous that a Minister for Finance of a modern capitalist economy for a period of years stashed his savings in a shoebox?

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