Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

One hundred years after the great event, the words of the poem that celebrated that should be engraved on the doors of the Minister for Finance:

What need you, being come to sense,

But fumble in a greasy till

And add the halfpence to the pence

And prayer to shivering prayer, until

You have dried the marrow from the bone;

The Government has dried the marrow from the bone of ordinary Irish working people the length and breadth of this State. Along with Fianna Fáil, it has inflicted on the Irish people six successive years of austerity and over €28 billion of taxes and cuts, and its members come in here today and tell the Irish people that that was not enough, that they want more. They tell ordinary families that they need to pay more taxes. The Government tells them that their public services have to be diminished a little more. The Government tells them that the safety nets that were there to protect them need to be stripped away, while it fumbles in its greasy till and protects the highest sections of society - the bankers, developers and - let us not forget - themselves. Ní thuigeann an Taoiseach agus an Tánaiste nach féidir a thuilleadh a fháisceadh as muintir na hÉireann.

One hundred years after the Lock-out, the Government has locked itself into a policy of austerity. The Irish people, locked outside the gates of Leinster House today, are protesting at this budget, but the Government will ignore them, just as it ignored them in successive years and just as it ignored the pleas from civic society that the policies of austerity were not working for them, their families or their communities. Like in 1913, this is a day when the Irish people deserve to see courage and leadership in challenging the economic woes inflicted on the State.

My party has categorically proven to the Government that it had a range of options when it came to formulating the budget.

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