Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)

While not knowing any of the personal circumstances of the Deputies from Fine Gael and Labour, it is safe to say they all live in relative comfort. None of them are lying awake at night worrying about when the next letter threatening to cut off the ESB or repossess the family home will be in the letter-box. This makes the feigned concern we hear all too often in this Chamber from some quarters all the more disgusting.

All we get is the same old mantra of how Fianna Fáil left such a mess that nothing else can be done but to implement its failed policies. I hear soundbites coming from the Government benches that painful decisions must be made as a result of the constraints of the EU and IMF bailout negotiated by the previous Administration. However, the only pain being felt is that by ordinary people. There comes a point where a Government must stand up for itself and the people it is supposed to represent. The provision of clean drinking water free from charges is one such point. The time has come for Members opposite, especially those in the Labour party, to grow a pair and do what is right, not what they are told by their paymasters in Europe or Fine Gael.

If they need any reminder of what the right thing to do is regarding the austerity cuts being imposed on us by the EU and the IMF, they should recall their party leader's words from December last year:

I described that agreement as a sell-out at the weekend but it was not until yesterday evening that we got the document containing the full details of the sell-out. It is an extraordinary document. The Government is effectively proposing to agree the budgets for the next three years with the EU and with the IMF. It is down to a level of detail that we have never seen before, and includes amounts of expenditure and amounts of tax, specific timetabled commitments in respect of property taxes, water charges and pensions, none of which has been legislated for by the House. It amounts to a surrender of the country's economic freedom. That is what is contained in this document. The Labour Party cannot be bound by what is contained in the document, not only for democratic reasons, but also because it will not work.

The Government needs to lead, to stop offering snivelling excuses and drop the line that it is all Fianna Fáil's fault.

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