Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am trying to show, like a doctor would show to a patient, that it is behaving in a way that is not going to help it get well again. The Government is behaving schizophrenically. It is not getting its facts, its situation properly measured, its accountability properly aligned and working logically from there. It could do it. However, it has got to stop what it is doing if it is about to go over a cliff or about to hit the iceberg to stay on the Titanicissue. The Government must stop the engines, review, reconsider, nothing is lost. Just because €80 million was spent on consultancy fees and €600 million on the installation of meters, amounting to about €750 million, those costs are gone, it is a mistake, but do not compound the mistake by alienating the people of this country, the 1 million people who earn gross pay of less than €25,000 per year, the families of the 100,000 deeply distressed mortgages, the homeless people, the 90,000 on waiting lists for homes, and the 500,000 to 600,000 who have emigrated, including two of my sons, and the various instances of under-funded care institutions about which we heard yesterday from Deputy Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin and others, where care is not provided because of the stress of lack of resources in many of these places. The stress leads to dysfunctional behaviour where people take their own lives, families break up, divorces happen and children get sick and psychologically damaged. That is what happens when society becomes unfair. We must get fairness back into the way we do things and the way we talk about things. It starts in places like this.

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