Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

Health spending has been cut dramatically in the State. It remains lower. That gets to the point which is that the vast majority of the €31 billion of cuts that have applied, continue. We are about €30 billion smaller in terms of vital spending than we were pre-crisis.

I draw attention to young people’s jobseeker’s allowance. The Labour Party in particular loves talking about protecting the core rates of social welfare payments. Somehow the payment to people under 25 years on €100 a week does not count as a core social welfare payment. They are not seeing any recovery here.

I also wish to refer to capital spending. A great capital plan was announced last week or the previous week. There was much fanfare on its launch. I said that it would only amount to an extra €200 million being spent next year. It does not. In the Estimates, the Government intends to spend less on capital spending next year than this year, despite the fact that we are about half the level of the long-term trend on capital investment.

The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform finished with a line that I am sure he thought was very clever: “Who speaks of Syriza now?”, so proud is he of the knife in the back of the Greek people who have to suffer the capitulation of Syriza and then being kicked when they are down.

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