Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There are people watching proceedings in this Chamber this morning who do not know how they will manage their week-to-week domestic budgets because of the cuts the Government is introducing. The Tánaiste has accused others of having a hard neck. I suggest that his is a hard neck of the bright, brassy variety. It is clear that "fair" is a four-letter word in the minds of Fine Gael and the Labour Party. I do not know how he can credibly say what he has said to the very people he promised to protect, including children and their parents, carers and people with long-term sickness and disability. I do not know how any Member opposite will look these people in the eye and utter the word "fair". The Government is rushing through social welfare legislation today to introduce cuts which in real terms and in real time will cause real hardship to real families, real children and real women. Here is the real clanger - these are the very sections of society to which the Government promised protection. So much for that. I do not know whether the Tánaiste deliberately set out to make liars of his Ministers, TDs and Senators and to make a liar of himself, but he has done that comprehensively. So brass iron is his own neck that he will stand up in this Chamber and waffle on about fairness. I do not know how he does it.

I suggest to Government Members, especially those in the Labour Party, that perhaps the die is not yet cast. Amendments will be brought forward today to see off the worst excesses of these cuts, particularly in respect of the respite care grant and child benefit. The latter is the matter about which the Tánaiste was so passionate and so right not so long ago. The die may not already be cast. Despite Labour Deputies' brass-necked leader, who has made liars of them, perhaps they will step up to the plate and actually defend those people to whom they made solemn promises.

See this speech in context