Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Not a single new garda was trained between 2010 and 2013. Just 200 new recruits were taken in last year and the numbers for the last two years will not even cover the retirements. While on the face of it, the announcement of 600 gardaí in 2016 sounds like a lot, as the Minister herself has acknowledged, retirements are roughly 400 each year. That leaves a net gain of 200, far short of the announcement.

Since entering Government, Fine Gael and Labour have cut the strength of An Garda Síochána by nearly 10%. That is a truly shocking statistic, especially given the sustained attacks in rural Ireland by organised criminal gangs. Sinn Féin has proposed investment in community policing by training an additional 1,000 gardaí to ensure the strength of the force gets back to where it was before this Government assumed office.

The disastrous economic policies initiated by Fianna Fáil and continued by Fine Gael and Labour has seen over €30 billion taken out of the economy in taxes and cuts. Bréag iomlán atá ann nuair a deir an Rialtas go bhfuil muid ar fad ag obair as lámh a chéile sa ghéarchéim seo. Masla atá ann fosta do na saoránaigh sin atá ag fulaingt go géar.

Many of our citizens have suffered greatly while those who were protected are again first in line to benefit under this Government. Those being forced to pay the price for the Government's policies are families on low and middle incomes. Those paying the price are families put to the pin of their collar by the family home tax and water charges. They are the 500,000 people who have emigrated since 2008. Young people are continuing 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 austerity policies include lone parents.

They are the thousands of seriously ill and disabled children and adults who have had their discretionary medical cards withdrawn. Those paying are sick people forced to go without medicine because of the introduction of prescription charges. The price is being paid by those who use our public hospitals where one in eight patients on a waiting list is in the queue for over a year. Some people are waiting up to four years to see a consultant. That is some record. The price is being paid by the 130,000 families on the social housing waiting lists and the 100,000 households in mortgage arrears. Legal proceedings to repossess homes have increased tenfold. Rents are still increasing and the number of homeless children continues to rise.

While all these people have paid the price of Government policies, who did Fine Gael and the Labour Party protect? They certainly protected the property developers. NAMA has been allowed to pay developers salaries of €200,000 a year while medical cards were being stripped from children. The Government protected the bondholders. Billions of euro have been paid to international junior and senior bondholders who gambled on unstable banks while the Government broke its social contract with Irish citizens. The Government also protected the vulture capitalists. Billions of euro worth of Irish assets are being subjected to a fire sale while the citizen picks up the losses.

The Government protected the tiny wealthy elite in this State. Wealth tax and tax relief loopholes have been allowed to continue. It protected the banks. A total of €64 billion of public money was pumped into the banks and then bank CEOs were allowed to pay themselves salaries of €800,000 a year while threatening families with eviction. The Government abjectly refused to get a resolution to the problem of legacy debt. That is its legacy. It protected the golden circle. Just like Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Party continued political appointments to State boards and failed to act on high salaries for politicians and those in banking and State bodies.

Meanwhile, the Government has ignored the demands of hundreds of thousands of citizens who have taken to the streets again and again to demand it scraps domestic water charges. It should have done so yesterday. The water charges issue has not gone away, you know. It has become a catalyst for popular discontent against the Government. The community mobilisations have been extraordinary and a real example of genuine, active citizenship. Those who have been politicised will not now meekly back down in the face of Government bribes, slander or intimidation. The major mobilisations we have seen are not just against water charges. They are against the blind, relentless pursuit of a failed austerity agenda.

The Taoiseach has characterised the forthcoming election as a choice between stability and chaos but there is no stability for low-paid workers or those on zero-hour contracts. There is no stability for those patients and front-line workers facing chaos in our hospital accident and emergency departments. There is no stability for those families facing the prospect of losing their home. This Government's idea of stability is very different to that held by most citizens. The Taoiseach and the Tánaiste's notion of stability is the maintenance of a deeply unequal and dysfunctional status quo. That is not the stability our people need or want. This Government has used its huge Dáil majority to attack the rights and welfare of struggling families and vulnerable citizens in complete contradiction of its 2011 election promises.

The Taoiseach should think of this phrase "fool me once-----

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