Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

I commend all those involved in the struggle to improve nutrition and end hunger. They should receive every support. The point I am making to the Taoiseach, however, is that the resources deployed in this regard are a fraction of what could be brought to bear in a concerted way if we had a very different financial system internationally and a different order of priorities. Does the Taoiseach not see any contradiction between his wish to end suffering and the fact that European and other world leaders, among whom he mixes so effortlessly and who slap him on the back as the best of friends, deploy significantly more resources to areas such as armaments production than to the resolution of human problems such as hunger, whose solution is crucial?

The Taoiseach mentioned in his reply two billionaire so-called philanthropists. The poverty-stricken and hungry are dependent on the kindness of people who make billions, using all kinds of tax havens in the process to maximise the profits of their corporations. Does this not strike the Taoiseach as obscene in reality? The wealth these people have created, including the €15 trillion that has been salted away, is created by human labour, by hundreds of millions of people. Should it not be taxed in an emergency fashion through transaction and wealth taxes? With his friend Prime Minister Cameron, why does the Taoiseach not open up a new front in this regard rather than apply the Band-Aid which, unfortunately, will not in any way resolve the crisis of world hunger?

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