Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

It has been reported - the Government has not contradicted this - that the combined cost of the visits of President Obama and the Queen may run to approximately €25 million. We still cannot get a straight answer as to whether this is the case. Given those reports and the growing number of experts and commentators internationally and domestically who are saying that our economy is ruined, the constant protestations of Ministers that they have no money for anything because we are in the straitjacket of the IMF and that the much vaunted jobs budget, now a jobs initiative which will be fiscally neutral, is looking certain to be a damp squib to beat all damp squibs because we are not allowed-----

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