Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal North East, Sinn Fein)

I had the privilege once of being a member of an audience listening to a speech by the former general secretary of the Labour Party, Mr. Mike Allen. It was one of the best speeches I ever heard. Mr. Allen talked about the impact of unemployment on working class and rural communities across the country following the 1980s and compared it to the potato famine, which devastated this country. He said that it was not so much the famine that caused the devastation but the cholera, disease, hopelessness and loss of our language and that in the 1980s it was not so much the unemployment crisis but the heroin, despair, inter-generational unemployment and impact of it that caused the devastation. He made that speech to the then Taoiseach, Mr. Bertie Ahern. One could have heard a pin drop. It was a superb comparison.

The Minister will be aware that much of the work being done by DEIS schools is addressing the legacy of the 1980s. Almost half the number of people currently on the live register are long term unemployed. In my constituency of Donegal north-east, emigration is rife again. Thousands of young people across the county with a population of 160,000 people have emigrated. Unemployment has increased from 8,000 to 23,000. The impact of this on the ground is horrific. The same is happening in our cities. DEIS is dealing with the legacy of the last economic depression. The current recession is taking from this and the previous generation, which is insanity.

I do not perceive Ministers and Members opposite as indecent but the policies they are pursuing are fundamentally indecent. How can they look the people of their communities in the eye, some of whom they went to school with, played football with or socialised with all of their lives and tell them this is right? How can they tell the teachers who took up the challenge to reverse the impact on education of the last recession, that this is fair when in a few weeks time the Government will write a cheque for €1.2 million to people who I and they know should never see one cent of that money? It will do the same in respect of a further €3.1 billion by the end of March.

At what point will we look back to James Connolly? At what point will we find the essential Irishness, the fighting spirit within ourselves, to stand up for the vulnerable young children and teachers at the front-line who have done Trojan work and reversed the tide of the 1980s? These teachers who are now facing another tide need more, not less resources. The challenge to the Members opposite is to do something about this profound injustice.

At what stage will the Government raise with Chancellor Merkel, President Sarkozy or whomever are the Ministers for education in Germany and France how its Ministers are to justify these types of insidious, unjust, indecent cuts against the most disadvantaged people in this country while it pays wealthy, greedy, reckless, elite investors around the globe? What I am witnessing is remarkable. It is the hijacking of decency and democracy by an elite which gambled recklessly, lobbied for low regulation and took over the sanity of Governments and economists and destroyed our economies. What have we done? We have rewarded them and put them at the head of the European Central Bank, ECB, and made them technocratic Prime Ministers in Greece and Italy.

At what point do we look at the busts around this Chamber and acknowledge our inheritance as Irish citizens? The Proclamation at the front door which vows to cherish the children of the nation equally is my inheritance as a Teachta Dála. At what point do we find within ourselves the ability to fight against this disastrous situation we face? I am sure that in 20 years' time I will review more speeches by people like Mr. Mike Allen and others engaged in community activism. We will review the speeches of another Mike Allen in regard to the impact of this recession and the need to address it, to which speech another Taoiseach will listen, comment that it was great but will not do anything.

I do not consider myself to be a more decent man that the Minister or Minister of State. However, they and their Cabinet colleagues have the power to change things. They can start by reversing these cuts. They could make a statement by no longer punishing the most vulnerable or crushing the morale of the teachers, communities and people on the front line in this area. I appeal to them to find their Irishness and spirit and to do justice to the fight of those who came before us.

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