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

It worries me that over recent weeks, the only serious policy issue that emerged was the rather shocking attack by Deputy Varadkar on welfare cheats and a group of people who supposedly do not get up before 7 a.m. That was a new low in politics. It was very divisive and showed a deep level of prejudice against those who suffer inequality and hardship but skated over the fact that, as Millward Brown have just reported, 30% of people who are entitled to family income supplement do not claim it. There is more money not being claimed by people who are suffering hardship and poverty than is supposedly being defrauded by the welfare cheats the Minister unjustly targeted during the Fine Gael leadership campaign.

Deputy Coveney was the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government during the greatest housing and homelessness crisis in the history of the State and was more concerned with the Fine Gael leadership campaign. However, he took time out from that campaign to vote against a Bill put forward by Solidarity-People Before Profit which sought to stop evictions and control the rents that are being ratcheted up by the vulture funds to which Deputy Coveney sold the property of this country and on which the Government does not levy proper taxes.

I also raise the issue of the young woman who is at risk of suicide and is seeking an abortion. In a macabre re-run of the X case scandal , she has been imprisoned by the State.

What people want is hope, not hype. They want policies, not pantomime. Judging by recent weeks, we will not get that from Fine Gael but that is what Solidarity-People Before Profit will be trying to put forward in this House.

See this speech in context