Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

Last week and on Monday, when members from different unions from around the country visited their Deputies, they did something that was difficult. They spoke about their jobs and their children and what it cost them to live, not just to participate. The bankers who knifed the country's reputation went into hiding. Their names are still being protected. They comprise the golden missing circle that wrecked the country.

Does the Government prepare a five-year response to our economic position? Does it tell the House that the €16.5 billion will be removed within a structured way? No. Instead, it starts with the people it has caught while releasing a shower of deceit. Some 300,000 public servants did not receive increases in the second benchmarking exercise in 2008 because they had an imputed benefit of 12.5% in terms of pensions. On top of that there is the 6.5% pension contribution, the 1% income levy and now this levy. These are the facts and let us not run away from them.

What did people ask us at the meetings? If this levy is imposed when the Government looks for €2 billion, what will occur when it seeks €4 billion? People have been unfairly and unequally hammered. Their children will not be able to attend third level education. When all of the windy statements from the pseudo-sham republicans are made, how will they possibly justify a family with three children and an entitlement to €1,100 in family income supplement paying €2,700 in a levy? It is nonsense. It would be fine were if it were only absurd, but it is unfair, unequal and destructive of citizenship.

I support solidarity and Mr. David Begg. The Labour Party motion supports ICTU and refers to solidarity in a real sense. We could be positive and build a new economy, but all of the people across the floor are around the corpse of the old speculative economy. They are asking whether we can revert to how we were. The people who attended meetings in County Galway and across the country were not on waiting lists for helicopters and were not those who delivered us into a situation in which we have more Mercedes cars per capita than Germany. They were interested in paying their mortgages, getting an education for their children and retaining basic good health. They were public servants, people who chose to work for the public rather than themselves. They have been denigrated, insulted and treated unfairly, chosen as the first victims by a Government that will not show the House its five-year strategy to address the €16.5 billion deficit.

There are many examples, but I will finish with the landlords who own multiple houses. They must pay €200 per house, but their benefits in tax breaks will amount to €550 million. Would that not have been a good place to start? Would it not have been practical? What of the people in hiding from the banks who can fork as much as they like into their pension funds with tax benefits? If the Government could have found them, it could have started there. What citizenship is it to take one's passport with the Irish stamp on it and refuse to pay one's tax?

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