John Halligan (Waterford, Independent)

He continually told the people of Ireland "this is not our debt". The people no longer believe the Government, members of which are deliberately trying to confuse them. The Government has not succeeded. The people believed Fine Gael and the Labour Party that they would not pay the bondholders because they told them so. Both parties used the phrase "burn the bondholders" on television programmes and so on.

I remind Members opposite of the criticism they fired at the Independents. That was a bad mistake. Each of them was elected with a sizeable majority. We were elected based on what we told people, namely, that we would do everything in our power to ensure the bondholders were burned, to prove the Government wrong and to put it down because of what it was doing to the people. This Government is destroying the economy and people's livelihood. There are people who are hungry. We recently gave money to a Greek bondholder who is a multimillionaire. The Government needs to explain that to the people, including the people on the dole and the 100 people that will emigrate from our airports tomorrow morning. Fine Gael and the Labour Party should be ashamed of themselves: they lied to the people.

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