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

I have been on tenterhooks waiting to see whether it would be before or after lunch.

I strongly oppose this Bill which is a disgraceful attack on the elderly and the chronically sick. It represents a monstrous betrayal on the part of this Government of the promises that were made prior to the election about dealing with the crisis in our public health service and dealing with the two-tier system that persists in our public health service. As a general comment, it is becoming increasingly clear to me that the singular attribute of this Government is an attempt to pull the wool over people's eyes by manipulating the debate in this House and manipulating the media debate about what it is doing in order to cover its tracks for gross betrayals of election promises and for savage assaults on some of the most vulnerable sectors of our society. Nowhere is this more clear than in the butchering the Minister is meting out to the health service, to the chronically sick, to the vulnerable and to the elderly and we have seen the latest instalment in this outrageous budget.

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