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

Nothing has changed and these cuts will make it worse.

Education is key if we are to have any chance. The construction of a new DIT campus in Grangegorman has been scrapped when we should be investing in that area. In my own constituency, the IADT in Dún Laoghaire is 1,000 students over capacity because it was expecting new buildings, but the construction of these new buildings has now been shelved. This is disastrous. We have 96,000 people on the housing list, and the Government's policy is to stop building social housing and lease properties from private landlords instead. This will be more costly for the State and will cripple the possibilities of economic growth, development and recovery if the Government persists in going ahead with these cuts in capital expenditure. We need to increase investment in capital expenditure and that means telling the troika to get lost and to stuff their monetarist mantras.

See this speech in context