Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Government's failure to introduce even its own flawed universal health insurance policy is evidence of the Government's failure to address social inequality and poverty, especially child poverty, or clamp down on tax abusers. In April, it was revealed that the breakfast cereal giant, Kellogg's, which routes a significant chunk of its global revenues through the State, paid only €7 million in corporation tax on more than €7.1 billion in sales from Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The Ceann Comhairle should think about that in the morning as he pours milk over his cereal. In 2003, this company paid no Irish tax because it stated it made a loss of €101 million on sales of €1.4 billion. There are lots of other examples of multinationals taking advantage of the State's low rates of effective corporation tax.

What did the Taoiseach say? The most infamous memory that most Irish people have of the Taoiseach at Davos some years before this was of him stating that "people went mad borrowing" in a system that spawned greed, went out of control and led to the crash. So the people were at fault, not the corrupt bankers, not the corrupt politicians, not the developers, not the golden circle. Those are who the Taoiseach said were at fault. I see no evidence of that in the people who have had to bear the brunt of the Government's austerity policies.

At this year's conference, the Taoiseach actually advised European leaders to stick with austerity and ignore growing demands for a more thoughtful and fair way to deal with State and European debt, and on the back of the election of Syriza in Greece, he warned of the dangers of a drift to populism. The Greek people, the very nation that led the foundations of democracy, had voted overwhelming for a government - by the way, as the people did with the Taoiseach's Government - that would stand up for the rights of citizens, and the Taoiseach, who has let the people down in terms of the mandate that he was given, described this as populism.

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