Alex White (Dublin South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

He relented some minutes later, presumably out of sheer embarrassment, having heard Deputy Fleming praise the measure as "taxation on people with large amounts of money sitting in the bank". It then dawned on the Sinn Féin party that this was perhaps a measure taxing wealth.

I accept that the Labour Party has not been able to do everything it advocated in the manifesto it put to the Irish people. We obtained 19% of the vote and had 37 Deputies elected. It was not realistic for us to form a Labour Party Government. No party was in a position to form a Government on that occasion.

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