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

Well, the Taoiseach should answer these questions. How can he justify and explain the economic logic behind cutting special needs assistants, with the disruptive effect that will have on our education system and our young people, who are our economic future, the closure of accident and emergency wards in hospitals around the country, the savaging of the incomes of low-paid workers, despite the injustice of it and the clearly depressive effect it has on the economy, and the selling of State assets, many of them profitable, as is being demanded by the EU and IMF? How will that aid economic recovery? How is it fair? How will it improve the situation? The logic behind it is bizarre.

Is it not a fact that, in so far as there is now some discussion about shifting the burden on to the bondholders who actually caused this crisis, it is arising from the fact that the Greek people are protesting, rightly and justly, against the same vicious austerity measures that are being imposed on them? Did the Taoiseach discuss with his European counterparts contingency plans for the event of the eurozone breaking up? Are we in this country preparing contingency plans, such as printing punts, in preparation for the possibility that we might have to pull out of the euro? Can we have a direct answer to that question?

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