Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The reason I say that is because one can easily get caught up in the bubble of everybody wanting to find out which Minister will occupy which Department minutes or seconds before the announcements are made. However, it is not about personality politics. It is about politics of substance. Members, Ministers and the Taoiseach need to recognise that this country faces substantial and serious issues.

I wish the new Minister for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Donohoe, well in his role. That role will be very challenging for him but will be more challenging for the people of this country if he follows the script that the new Taoiseach outlined in debates with the Minister, Deputy Coveney, during the Fine Gael leadership campaign. The Taoiseach made it clear that he wants the limited fiscal space of less than €400 million that the Minister will have available in the 2018 budget to be used for tax cuts for the wealthiest in society.

He makes this grand gesture that nobody should pay a marginal rate of 50% or more, knowing that every single person earning under €70,000 pays less than 50%. What he is talking about is a tax cut that is worth over €500 million to people who at least earn twice the average income. This is at a time when we have countless homeless families. This is a time when we have children with life-limiting conditions whose parents want them to enjoy the last number of years that they will have and to be allowed to die with dignity in their own homes not being supported by the HSE. This is a time when there are hundreds of thousands of patients on hospital waiting lists and hundreds of people on trolleys in hospital corridors.

The new Taoiseach speaks about there being no left or right and that he wants to appeal to the centre. It cannot be denied that if one argues for tax cuts for the wealthiest, it will come at a cost to health, education, rural areas or infrastructure. This money cannot be conjured up. I am asking him to prioritise the needs of the country. We are almost ten years into the economic crisis and yet 80,000 families are in mortgage arrears. Is this new Government going to stand up for the banks? I doubt it. We have not seen anything yet. We will have a new Minister with responsibility for community and rural affairs, yet 100 bank branches across rural Ireland and elsewhere are becoming cashless, shutting customers out from across-the-counter services.

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