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

I wish to correct the record. I mentioned that I was talking to Mr. Gerard McSorley, who is a fine Irish actor, but I was actually talking about Mr. Sorley McCaughey of Christian Aid, who authored that good paper.

The game is up on the "race to the bottom" role that Ireland has played. The noose is tightening. Frankly, it is about time the Government got with the programme. We can argue about what happened previously, and we should when it comes to the changes made in 2014, but we must give up this stuff. It is not sustainable in the future and is robbing the majority of the world's peoples of incomes that are owed to them and that they need to make society function.

I do not know which writer with Rolling Stonedescribed Goldman Sachs as a giant squid wrapped around the face of humanity sucking it dry. These corporations are another instance of that. It is what they are doing. As Oxfam has pointed out, the consequence of that has reached the extraordinary level of the world's nine richest people, most of whom are the CEOs of these very corporations, now having more personal wealth than the poorest half of the planet. It is literally the 1% and the 99%. That is where we are going and we should play no part in it, and it is shameful that we have been. Let us do something about this.

The Minister did not answer the question about Macau.

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