Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is certainly not a fortune teller, but he is the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. His Government colleagues, including the Minister for Finance, might believe him when he says "objectively, we have done a good job" of protecting the most vulnerable people in society, but that is not the experience on the ground. The budgets that have been delivered by this Government so far have impoverished sections of the community. Many people have been left with no option other than to leave by boarding the emigrant planes to Sydney, the United States and further afield. I welcome the Minister's assertion that the overall level of cuts will not be of the order of €2 billion. Reading between the lines, the Minister is insinuating that it will be much less. Does that mean the proposed adjustment will be halved? I would like the Minister to be more specific, because people deserve some level of certainty in their lives as they plan their budgets heading into the autumn. I remind the House that this should not just be a case of scaling back the cutback agenda. An effort has to be made to begin to repair the damage that the Minister and his colleagues have inflicted on families and low-income workers in the succession of budgets over which they have stood.

See this speech in context