Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

"These unhappy times call for the building of plans that build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid." So wrote Roosevelt in the heat and heart of the great depression in the United States. While the United States is, as we know, a can do country with mottos such as "change you can believe in", this sad Cabinet shuffled in today like a gone to seed athlete out of breath and certainly not fit for the sport for all with which the new Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport seemed to threatened us.

On the menu in the Dáil restaurant one can see items marked "OT" for "Operation Transformation". These are meant to provide slimmed down more energetic more vigorous versions of the people who sit on these benches.

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