Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The key question for this Parliament to address is social policy and not just social policy but social awareness, social conscience. The hard-hitting concrete items that have been raised by the leaders of the two main Opposition parties and by Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett, put flesh and blood on the arid statistics. I remind the Taoiseach that the social impact - those are his words - of 100,000 mortgages under stress, of which 40,000 are under extreme distress, represents in the first instance about 250,000 human beings who are Irish people, of which 100,000 are children. Here we are legislating for and having a referendum on children's protection and there are 100,000 children in households under trauma distress. The teachers, doctors and the GPs can talk about this-----

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