Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Young people continue to leave in their droves because of poor opportunities, low wages and a lack of access to housing and child care. Those paying for the Government's policies include lone parents and others who have had their child benefit and back-to-school allowances slashed.

The folks in government sat around the Cabinet and took these decisions. They took decisions to remove discretionary medical cards from thousands of seriously ill and disabled children and adults. Collectively, the Government took the decision. Sick people were forced to go without medicine because the Cabinet decided to introduce prescription charges, despite promises not to so do. The Cabinet decided to cut home help hours, the mobility grant and annual respite care grants. The Cabinet took these decisions. As for public hospitals, one in eight people on a waiting list is in a queue for more than a year and in January 2015, there were 600 patients on trolleys. These people are paying the price for the Government's policies. Some people must wait for four years before seeing a consultant. There are 90,000 families on the social housing waiting list and 104,693 households are in mortgage arrears. Under the present Government, legal proceedings to repossess homes have increased tenfold. Rents still are increasing and the number of homeless children continues to rise.

All these people, these citizens, these unfortunates, live in the best small country in the world in which to do business, but who did the Taoiseach protect? What did Fine Gael and the Labour Party do and whom did they look after? They certainly protected the property developers. NAMA has been allowed to pay developers' salaries of €200,000 a year while the Government has taken medical cards from children. The Government protected bondholders and billions have been paid to international junior and senior bondholders who gambled on unstable banks while the Government broke its social bond with the people. The Government protected the vulture capitalists and billions of euro worth of Irish assets are being subjected to a fire sale while the citizens pick up the losses. The Government protects the tiny wealthy elites in the State. Wealth tax and tax relief loopholes have been allowed to continue. The Minister for Finance refuses to come to the Dáil to account for the sell-off of NAMA's Northern loan book or to answer questions about insider dealings. No, why should he? Why should he be accountable here?

The Minister for Finance and the Taoiseach are about protecting the elites, the golden circles and the insiders. In budget 2015, instead of easing the burden on those who have suffered the most over the past four years, Fine Gael and the Labour Party prioritised helping the richest 10%. They protected the banks. A total of €64 billion of the public's money was pumped into the banks and then bank managers were allowed to pay themselves €800,000 a year while they kept mortgage interest rates high and threatened families with eviction. The Government objectively has failed to get a resolution to the problem of legacy debt. Instead, the Taoiseach stated he will not have "defaulter" stamped on his forehead. He refused even to try to face up to the elites in the European Union.

Moreover, just like Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Party continued political appointments to State boards and failed to act on the high salaries for politicians, in banking or on State boards. The Government's high regard for the arts was clear from the manner in which it appointed one of its own, John McNulty, to the board of the Irish Museum of Modern Art. It has ignored the demands of hundreds of thousands of citizens who have taken to the streets repeatedly to demand that it scrap domestic water charges. The Government's first launch of the commemoration of 1916 was an embarrassment. It was a joke but it also was an accurate insight into the attitude of the Labour Party and Fine Gael to the Rising, to its leaders and, more particularly, to the Proclamation of 1916.

As for the peace process, the most significant political development on this island since partition, Fine Gael and the Labour Party have failed to act as co-guarantors of the Good Friday Agreement. Instead, to their shame, they have sought to use the peace process to attack Sinn Féin and the Government has acquiesced continually in the approach of the British Tory Government. The Taoiseach has failed miserably to press the British on legacy issues such as the Dublin-Monaghan bombings and the Pat Finucane inquiry. While the Taoiseach might mention it for the record at a meeting, he has no consistent strategic engagement with the British on all these issues. Most recently, the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the Fianna Fáil leader played politics with the brutal murders of two men in Belfast. The Taoiseach tried to pressurise the SDLP into supporting the adjournment of the Assembly while the Fianna Fáil leader went further and called for the suspension of the institutions established by the Good Friday Agreement, an agreement his party played an honourable role in bringing about. Time and again I have asked the Taoiseach to make the North a priority and he has refused to do so.

The Taoiseach assumed office with a promise of a democratic revolution as he is aware that is what the people want. The rhetoric rings true and those who write the Taoiseach's script are aware there is an urgency and a desire among people for fundamental change. However, he has proved to be as adept as his Fianna Fáil predecessors in practising unaccountable Government and stroke politics. Irish Water now is a byword for unaccountability, the scandalous waste of public money and insider politics. The Government has characterised the forthcoming elections as a choice between stability and chaos, but there is no stability for low-paid workers, those on zero-hour contracts, and patients and front-line workers facing chaos in hospital accident and emergency departments. There is no stability for families facing the prospect of losing their homes because the Government will not put manners on the banks. It is easy to put manners on the poor but the Government will not put manners on the elites. The Taoiseach's idea of stability is different from that of most citizens. His idea of stability is the maintenance of a deeply unequalstatus quoand that is not the stability the people need or want. The people seek change and if the Taoiseach really believes, for once, what he says, he should go to the people and let them have their day. He should resign now and let the people govern. The Taoiseach should call a general election now.

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