Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

I wish everybody a happy period of rest over Christmas. I also thank staff and all those who have helped us in the House.

Unfortunately, this will be a very difficult Christmas for hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens, for example, those in enforced unemployment and those in negative equity or unsustainable mortgages, and for all those who are struggling with the effects of the crisis in the chaotic capitalist system of our time, the dictatorship of the financial markets and the disastrous austerity and bailout policies continued by the Government.

On legislation, it was flagged in one or two media outlets today that the Government may have in mind the introduction of legislation next year to pinch directly from the incomes of workers or social welfare recipients fines or charges they may not have paid or against the payment of which they are protesting, for example, the insidious home tax. Is the Government calculating such legislation for the new year?

What is the Labour Party's take, a few days before Christmas, on hammering low paid EBS workers for €2,000 by denying them their 13th wage instalment? I refer to workers with gross incomes of €26,000 and €27,000 per annum.

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