Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach welcomed the agreement in the first instance and has been joined in support of it by Sinn Féin. How can he and anyone who has signed up to this agreement, including Sinn Féin, seriously call this a fresh start when it is clear this is the stale, regressive old austerity? It is the Northern Ireland version of the troika assault that was imposed on people here over the past six years and it would better be described as a fresh offensive against the poor and working people in the North rather than some sort of fresh start. Is it not the case that public services are going to be assaulted? The agreement warns of "challenging cost reduction targets for each of the nine new departments", which will include "structural reform in health, education, housing and justice". We all know from the troika agreement that "structural reform" is code for savage cuts. Some 20,000 public servants are to be cut from the public service in the North in areas like health, education and housing. How can the Taoiseach welcome that? How can that be anything other than an assault on those services?

Do we not know that from our own experience? Does the Taoiseach not know, and should not Sinn Féin know, that when one slashes - as we did down here - 30,000 staff from the public sector, what one gets is a crisis in health and housing, and that what we are lining up to do now in the North is exactly the same? Is it not inevitable that this agreement will have the same devastating effects on the North as our austerity package had on the South?

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