Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Will the Minister even make a pretence of trying to answer any of the questions we submit for the Topical Issue debate? She arrived with a prepared script and did not bother to respond to any of the questions put to her. I asked about the State grants that are still being provided. The situation is reminiscent of the line from the song "Ordinary Man", by the Kildare singer, Christy Moore, "He still drives a car and smokes his cigar...".

The people who run Hewlett Packard are in receipt of massive incomes which have increased dramatically, and some of them are playing leading roles in State appointments. Lionel Alexander, vice president and managing director of Hewlett Packard, served on the board of the IDA from 2009 to date. He has only just been listed as formerly of that board. Last September, the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Bruton, appointed him to the board of the Institute of Technology Tralee. In September 2013, Deputy Burton appointed the managing director of Hewlett Packard Ireland, Martin Murphy, as chair of the Labour Market Council to drive the Pathways to Work programme to get people back to work. Instead of more IDA supports, corporate welfare and tax write-downs that cost the taxpayer, can we, for a change, use public investment to create jobs and develop our own native industrial policy rather than continuing this type of corporate welfare?

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