Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

The Taoiseach says he has no plans to publish a revised programme for Government as the new Dáil session begins. Why does he have no such plans when it is clear that the programme he borrowed from Fianna Fáil based on austerity is spectacularly failing the people? There are record numbers on the live register and record numbers of long-term unemployed. A policy of austerity has been widely discredited by bodies as diverse as UNCTAD, as well as by right-wing economists. Even defenders of capitalism now realise that austerity has been a disaster, cutting the market and creating massive unemployment by depressing the market.

See this speech in context