Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Of course it is good that we will be out of the bailout, but anyone who thinks we are regaining sovereignty and that we are in control of our own affairs is living in cloud cuckoo land. A range of measures has been brought in to copper-fasten the neoliberal agenda. This is not the first Government to behave in that manner. I found an article in The Guardian that was published the day after the Budget Statement in 2010. It stated the following:

During the debate in the Dáil Fine Gael's spokesman for finance Michael Noonan accused the Fianna Fáil/Green Party government of being socially blind and said the budget was "soft on the rich and hard on the poor".

Noonan added: "This is the budget of a puppet government, doing what it is told by the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the European Central Bank.

The Minister was dead right. In fairness to Fine Gael and the Labour Party, which have implemented neoliberalism lock, stock and barrel, so did Fianna Fáil and the Green Party before them, and, sadly, we have seen Sinn Féin do the same in Northern Ireland today. There is not really much difference between them.

An interesting issue today is that of the fishing industry. We have had problems in Kilmore Quay in the last week or so due to the low quotas imposed on the local fishermen. At the moment, the French are allowed to catch six times more whitefish in Irish waters than the Irish. There is no fairness involved here. The notion that all our waters are European waters is a bit hard to take. I am sure the Polish coalfields or the vineyards of Italy are not much good to us. I do not know why other countries are entitled to catch more of our fish than we are. That is a massive problem. I realise that the market has to deal with the fact that overfishing is unhealthy, but we must work towards greater fairness for the Irish.

Anybody who has had the privilege of buying The Irish Times today will find it contains a leaflet from Gay Mitchell, MEP, in which he states that we need to change the vocabulary:

'Austerity' is in fact 'Consolidation'- part of the planned recovery. ... The problem at home [meaning Ireland] is not "austerity", it is lack of solidarity.

One Fine Gael spokesman described Gay Mitchell as "the evil of two lessers". It is incredible that this guy can say that austerity is not our problem, but rather a lack of solidarity. Is cutting medical cards from pensioners his idea of solidarity? The budget for the Traveller community has been cut by 18%.

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