Sandra McLellan (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The motion proposing no confidence in the Fine Gael-Labour Party Government comes in the wake of one of the most savage budgets in the history of this State. This week will see a reduction in child benefit payments, cuts in the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance and cuts to the respite care grant. The Government is clearly anti-children. More importantly, it is anti the ordinary man and woman on the street who are struggling to make ends meet. Attacking the poor and the vulnerable, introducing measures that increase inequality and poverty, and protecting the rich and affluent by refusing to introduce a wealth tax are, by any standards, the hallmark of a vicious and cruel state. When these same facts are pointed out in this House, the Taoiseach, Deputy Enda Kenny, has no defence. Instead, his only response is to resort to personal insult, defamation and slander of my party's leader, Deputy Gerry Adams. Let me tell him that the Irish people are not fooled by such diversionary tactics. They know only too well the lengths to which the Government is prepared to go to defend its own power and privilege and, more importantly, to protect the class interests of a rich and pampered minority of Irish society. On what basis, I might ask, has the Government reserved for itself the right to become the political and moral conscience of the Irish people? The Taoiseach presides over a Government that misled the Irish people and that has reneged on almost all of its election promises. He is the head of a party that has at its core a deep-rooted ideological belief that places the primacy of the market over the welfare and well-being of ordinary Irish men, women and children. If there is an ethical, moral and political bankruptcy present in this House, it is to be found not in the Sinn Féin Party but in Fine Gael and its lackeys in government, the so-called Labour Party. The country is led by a puppet Government that takes its instructions from the institutions of market capitalism. Let us not be under any illusion: Fine Gael and Labour Party politicians, by virtue of the policies they are now implementing, are nothing more than heartless, bureaucratic functionaries administering the Irish State in the interest of bondholders, speculators and a European political elite.

The Government has betrayed the Irish people and its own election promises. In terms of a vision or a plan, it is morally and politically bankrupt. It has one and only one agenda and that is to cling to power at all costs. To do this it is willing to cut child benefit when the incomes of households with children are already falling further and faster. The same households are three times more likely to be in debt arising from ordinary everyday living expenses than households without children. Yet, according to the Government, a family with children is fair game and it will be penalised. Even worse, if one is a carer who works 24 hours a day, seven days a week in the home, then in the eyes of the Government one is also fair game.

What type of government, one must ask, would go after two of the most vulnerable groups in Irish society - children and carers? The answer is simple: a Fine Gael-Labour Party Government that has turned its back on the people who elected it, that is politically bankrupt and that is prepared to wage war on the most vulnerable and powerless groups in Irish society. In the coming months the same Government plans to introduce a tax on the family home. It appears there are no depths to which the Government will not sink when it comes to attacks on the living standards of the vulnerable and the overworked. I call on the Government to do at least one decent thing since it came to power - that is, to reverse the proposed cuts to the carer's respite grant.

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