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

-----but because it is too complicated, we cannot look at where the wealth rests in our society. The fact is that it is possible but the Government does not want to do it. The political establishment is representing those interests and protects them at every turn. How the Government has responded to the economic crisis is just the latest episode of that. It is always the same; it is always the poor. The crisis in the 1980s was presided over by Haughey when he was telling the people to tighten their belts and to make sacrifices and that everyone had to pull together but he was busy helping his friends salt away their money in offshore accounts and he was being paid with money from big business going into Ansbacher accounts.

We are getting the same story now. Ordinary people have to suffer. It is they who have to tighten their belts and take the impact of austerity in order that we protect at all costs the financial and corporate elites, the billionaires and the multimillionaires who were still swanning around at the global economic forum organised by the Government, advising us on how to deal with the economic crisis. That symbolises it all. I wonder what the Minister is going to do about it but I have very little confidence he will do anything.

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