John Halligan (Waterford, Independent)

That is what the Members opposite are talking about.

At the demonstration outside these Houses today by the many hundreds of people who came from all around the country I noticed one placard which read: "If you tolerate this, then our children will be next". I thought about that from the stand where I was speaking and I asked myself what have we tolerated. We have tolerated gambling and robbery from the banks. We have tolerated greedy developers deliberately inflating house prices, corrupt politicians, austerity measures that have driven hundreds of thousands of people into poverty, lies and more lies, broken promise after broken promise from the previous Government and now from this Government. Whatever little faith people have in politics is evaporating as a result of what the Government is doing. They were put into power because people did not want to hear any lies or the broken promises as they had heard for the past 15 years, but that is what the Government has done. Thousands of irate citizens have not yet marched on this Dáil and as a result the Government believes it can get away with destroying children's lives. If they were marching because of all the other broken promises made years ago that placard - "If we tolerate this then our children will be next" - would be relevant.

The Government is waging war on the less well off in society, and the most vulnerable people in society at present are children with special needs. Does the Government seriously believe it will get away with vicious cuts such as these? Members opposite are telling me there are no cuts.

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