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

I commend the people of Roscommon for coming out and protesting to defend their hospital. I commend the people of Portlaoise who are mobilising to defend their accident and emergency services. I want to encourage the people of Shankill and Wicklow and Loughlinstown to join the people of Roscommon and Portlaoise in protesting to defend their hospital's accident and emergency service which is coming under attack. They will have the opportunity to do so this Saturday at 2 p.m. in Shankill.

We all need to stand together against this madness. The attacks on our hospital services are falsely being presented as something to do with health and safety. This is nothing but a lie to cover up a brutal agenda of cutbacks and downgradings of public services and of vital hospital services in order to satisfy the greed of bankers and bondholders and to do the bidding of the IMF and their EU masters who are dictating to this Government that the lives of ordinary people and the services for ordinary people in this country should be sacrificed in order to ensure the EU, the IMF, the bankers, the bondholders and speculators in Europe, can make €9 billion profit out of the lives and services of people in this country. The logic that this Government is applying to justify what it is doing to hospital services in Roscommon, Portlaoise and Loughlinstown, is like the logic the US applied in the Vietnam war when they said, "We are going to save your village by destroying it." It is the same logic that is being applied here - "we are going to save your health service by closing your accident and emergency service; we are going to save your health service by closing and downgrading your hospitals". It is nothing but nonsense and lies to cover up brutal and unjust cutbacks. People will die as a result of this. There is a choice and the choice is to make the bondholders and speculators who caused this crisis pay for it, not the ordinary citizens of Roscommon, Portlaoise, Loughlinstown, Shankill, Wicklow and the other places around the country whose hospital services are being attacked.

I appeal to people that this is part of a bigger agenda. We need to mobilise now against this mad, IMF-EU austerity package. People will have the opportunity to do so on Saturday, 16 July, at 2 p.m., at the Garden of Remembrance, Parnell Square. I hope the whole country comes out to stop this madness and these unjust cutbacks.

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