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

Does the Taoiseach not realise that ordinary people in this country are sick of hearing constant announcements about progress on restoring the public finances and announcements such as we have had over recent weeks about great deals for stringing out the period over which we must pay these enormous debts, declared as victories and reasons to celebrate, when there is no commitment to anything to alleviate the burden of cuts and austerity inflicted on those citizens this year, next year and the year after? The truth is that extending maturities makes no difference to the fact that this year we will pay over €8 billion in interest on this massive debt on which the Government will not even ask for a write-down. We will continue to pay that enormous level of interest on this utterly unsustainable debt year on year for years to come. Almost as much as the education budget is being paid out in interest on a debt largely either not ours at all or not the responsibility of ordinary citizens in that it resulted from a collapse engineered by others. That is the problem and unless the Government addresses that we will be bled dry.

The Taoiseach rightly suggests that we are facing into a decade of this misery, of bumping along the bottom with mass unemployment, negligible growth and no prospect of improving that situation if this money continues to be drained out of us year on year. In the Taoiseach's discussions with other European leaders and in his statements about likely improvements in our financial situation when he says we will meet the 3% target and that will be the end of it, then the worst will be over, why does he not admit that will not be the case because when we reach the 3% target we immediately come under the demands of the fiscal referendum? Even though there is a three year time gap we will be required under that treaty to move towards 0.5% and will be required to reduce this debt of €200 billion by half, paying one twentieth per year, requiring billions of extra cuts and austerity after we meet the 3% debt target. We are facing into a decade of further cuts to pay off these debts and to meet the deficit targets. Where is the relief? Where is the light on the horizon for ordinary people given the requirements to which the Taoiseach has signed up and committed?

I do not think the Taoiseach should be light-hearted about the wine bill. Can he explain the wine bill that has been built up under his Government in the Department of Foreign Affairs? Why has the wine bill for the year that he came into office quadrupled? The amount spent by the Tánaiste's Department in the year that the Government came into office quadrupled. It appears that we now need four times more wine than we needed in the last year of the previous Government to entertain the great and the good of Europe. Is our strategy to get them a bit tipsy in the hope that they will give us the break in respect of our debt that we have not succeeded in getting from them? It is unconscionable that faced with the level of austerity being inflicted on ordinary people, we have to spend four times more on wining and dining delegates from Europe.

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