Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal North East, Sinn Fein)

Many years ago, I listened to a speech delivered to the then Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, comparing the after effects of the potato famine with the unemployment crisis of the 1980s. It was not so much the famine as the cholera and disease that followed that devastated the people. It was not so much the unemployment as the drugs crisis in the inner cities, the despair and the lack of hope. As the economy was turning around, the Taoiseach was asked how he would move people from a kick in the teeth to a kick in the backside to get back to work.

People talk the talk about charity as if they were Victorians but they do not really get the real lives of people. Maybe they are paid too much money, eat in fancy restaurants and have a lifestyle that disconnects them from real people. Tonight I listened to a presentation from community activists in this city. The real impact of cuts to the community and voluntary sector, as my friend Deputy Crowe pointed out, is on children who do not have food in their stomachs and educational supports and where resources that fill the gaps left by this economic crisis are taken away. In this State, policy ensures the reckless and unbelievably wealthy gamblers from other European and international states are paid every cent they are owed while we literally leave people starve in this country. We literally rob resources from the people in community development who are at the coalface. The former Minister of State with responsibility for community affairs in 2008 to 2009, John Curran, said the following about the work of community development projects:

The projects come from the communities themselves and what really inspires me is people's imagination and their own approach to coming up with solutions to their problems that work. They are so innovative and flexible and timely in their response that they are doing things the statutory agencies couldn't respond to in a short timeframe. People's ingenuity always astounds me.

Within a year, his Government brought in policies that destroyed community development projects in some cases or integrated them into partnership or development groups where they lost their focus on helping the most disadvantaged. It is in the style of McCarthy, our own McCarthy in this State, who likes to privatise public resources and take away amenities from the most disadvantaged working-class communities and cities and isolated rural communities. These are the policies being implemented.

To listen to a Labour Deputy come in here like a highlander with a hit-and-run speech about resources in the Six Counties makes me sick because for decades the Labour Party showed no interest in the people of the Six Counties. They criminalised republicans who stood up for their interests. Eddie Fullerton, a councillor from my town of Buncrana who was murdered by loyalists, was turned away from this building due to the censorship policies of the Labour Party at the time. I listened to the Labour Party Member preach about his care for the people of the North, as if one can compare this to a devolved Assembly in the Six Counties that must rely on funding from the central source like a town council or county council. The Assembly has no sovereignty or control over its affairs and it is being compared to this so-called sovereign institution, where the Labour Party and Fine Gael were elected by disadvantaged, working class communities in many cases, with hope in their hearts that they would allow Deputies to come into this Chamber and fight for their communities. This is nonsense, obfuscation and distraction. Every time Sinn Féin raises issues about our communities and the impact cuts and austerity have on real people's lives, we must listen to this hit-and-run obfuscation and nonsense. At some stage, it must stop and the Labour Party must understand that it represents the same communities I represent.

I say this to the one Labour Party Deputy out of almost 40 who is present in the Chamber to listen to this debate. I do not preach to him and I do not say I am better than him but I appeal to him to start to fight for the communities he represents and do justice for the people who put the Labour Party here. After five years, the Labour Party should be able to say that it stood up to the right-wing agenda that may exist in Fine Gael, defended their communities and defended them against privatisation, and a sustained and strategic attack by right-wing parties on community and voluntary groups who defend the most disadvantaged in this country. Let that be the legacy of the Labour Party after five years and let it not be that the Labour Party coalesced with right-wing influences-----

See this speech in context