Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I encourage the Chief Whip to read the transcript of what she said. The logic is perfect. The evidence and the facts supporting it are absolutely spot on. The Government is trying to fit something that does not fit the situation and it is wrong. The Government is launching a Titanic and they are all on board politically. They will be gone. It is tragic. They should stop it. There is no loss of face in stopping what is going to be a terrible accident.

We have, as I said, to do what is fair to get proper equality-based distributive economics working in this country. Deputy Grealish outlined how it will play out on the ground, how the stupidities and contradictions will appear all over the place and how there is no conservation for the next few years.

It is funny. In the countries on the globe where there is total drought they do not even charge for water and one would think they would because it is scarce. They do not. There is fundamental logic. We need to repair the systems of retaining water in the right quantities for distribution after treatment through pipes that do not leak. We agree it will cost €10 billion or thereabouts. However, that €10 billion can be got from the €25 billion that should be cancelled and torn up on the desk of the Central Bank Governor, Professor Honohan. If that story is told properly to the Europeans and the ECB, they will get it, but nobody has even told it. They get lost in lever arch files and in sections and subsections of law, and miss what is staring them in the face.

I appeal to the Minister to think with a fresh mind. He should look with fresh eyes and see the big picture. He should see what has happened and how it happened. He should look at the current situation in big picture terms, with €230 billion of debt.

Today we had stupidity in the anomaly of approving - Sinn Féin approved it - the Supplementary Estimate for pensions because of a miscalculation of how many people would retire from the public service. I have nothing against that, but yesterday we debated the 15,000 pensioners, deferred pensioners and current employees of the Irish aviation superannuation scheme - Aer Lingus and DAA.

The Government decided, with what sort of schizophrenic logic I do not know, that it can do nothing for them and yet whistle this one through today.

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