Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

On behalf of the Labour Party I want to object in particular to the arrangements which provide a mere ten minutes for the Taoiseach to explain to the country what people have been waiting to hear about not only for the past three weeks but for the past four months, since everything went wrong with the bank guarantee scheme. People are waiting to listen. If the Taoiseach thinks he can explain his proposals on reductions of up to €2 billion in public expenditure this year in ten minutes, address the proposal to put up to €8 billion into the recapitalisation of the banks and other issues such as how he proposes to deal with people becoming unemployed and to address the matter of people fearful of losing their houses because they are at risk of getting into mortgage arrears later this year——

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