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

There is a rotten logic to that. The reason many young people were unemployed in 2009 and the years afterwards was due to the calamitous economic collapse precipitated by the Fianna Fáil Party when in government and perpetuated by the austerity cuts Fine Gael and the Labour Party Government continued. The evidence for that is that prior to the economic collapse, we had near full employment. Even though there were no discriminatory social welfare rates, young people worked. The idea that if young people's social welfare payments are not slashed, they will all sit around doing nothing is discriminatory and prejudicial against young people. Does the Minister imagine that if one is under the age of 25 one can survive of less money - the social welfare rates are already poverty rates - on half or a little more than half of the payment rate? In the era of equality, that is just wrong.

See this speech in context