Patrick Nulty (Dublin West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister will be familiar with George Orwell's novel "1984". In it there is a concept called "doublespeak" and that is what the Government speaks, "doublespeak". It says one thing and couches its actions in rhetoric about fairness and reform and all the rest, but in reality what does it do? It savages and attacks the poorest and weakest in our society and treats them with contempt.

I offer one example. In the general election of February 2011 the Minister's party, the Labour Party, campaigned for the extension and expansion of mortgage interest supplement. That was a core element of the Labour Party's approach to deal with the mortgage crisis. However, the Government is abolishing it. Will the Minister explain how in two years she wanted to extend mortgage interest supplement because she thought it was crucial to deal with the whole mortgage issue, but now the Government intends to get rid of it? How can the Minister explain or rationalise that? The Minister knew the economic situation the country was in but the Government policy has completely shifted.

I will read a quote from an organisation with which the Minister will be familiar, "Today's cut in social welfare for young people is regressive and counter-productive .. [it is] fundamentally unjust". This came from youth wing of the Minister's party, Labour Youth. I spoke to some of the members yesterday when they were protesting outside the House. They are embarrassed. The Minister has made them embarrassed to be part of the Labour Party because of what she has done to them. The Minister need not take my word for it. She should go and speak to them at their conference this weekend. There are disgusted and appalled by this budget. I am referring to members of the Minister's party. That is a fact.

There has been certain rhetoric about young people sitting in front of plasma television screens and so on. These people are citizens and equals, exactly like the Minister and I but they are being deliberately targeted. The reforms introduced in this Bill will affect graduates. What they need is not training, but jobs.

This is a deliberate attempt to attack them, undermine their incomes and patronise them with promises of training when what is required is job creation and job stimulus.

Together with other independent Deputies, I published alternative proposals about how the deficit question could be addressed in a fair and just way. Members have heard from the Labour Party that a wealth tax is impossible. Why does the Minister not read, for example, the paper from Dr. Tom McDonnell of TASC about how a wealth tax could operate in Ireland? Why not even consider it, instead of dismissing us and undermining social democratic arguments for dealing with this crisis in a fair and just way? The policies of the Government come straight from the Chicago school of economics. When the Government forms its budgets and develops its policy, the Minister and her Cabinet colleagues demonstrate that they are the disciples of Friedman and Hayek. Moreover, they implement their policies with a ruthlessness that a Tory Government in Britain in the 1980s could not muster. The Minister should be ashamed of herself and should be ashamed of this Bill. She should resign from the Government and call a general election.

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