Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

It is Thursday. It is also the day the Government is cutting the pandemic unemployment payment by €50 per week for many people and €100 for many other people. It is not a small adjustment, not a few bob here or a few bob there, but a cut of €100 or €50 per week for tens of thousands of people who do not have the option of going back to work. It is not possible for them to do so in the vast majority of cases because of the pandemic. It might be one thing if the virus were settling down, if the situation were improving and if they had the prospect of going back to work in a week, two weeks or three weeks, but it is the opposite scenario. The virus is on the rise and they have little chance of going back to work in the next week or two or three - perhaps not for a matter of months - yet they are forced to survive on €100 or €50 less per week.

I listened carefully to Deputy Lahart's contribution - incredible stuff. He said the Government's priority should be the people who are not able to sleep tonight because of the worry they are living with in their lives. It was an incredible statement from a member of a Fianna Fáil Party that is standing together with the Green Party and Fine Gael today and proposing to cut people's weekly incomes by €50 or €100. How many people does Deputy Lahart think were able to sleep last month or last week who will not be able to sleep tonight because of the action of the Government Deputies on the benches on which he sits? Yet he comes in here with crocodile tears for people who are not able to sleep tonight when it is his actions that are contributing to people's sleeplessness. This raises the issue of the mental health impacts of this. Younger people will probably be disproportionately hit by this. I think people in precarious employment will be disproportionately hit by it. What has this money been used for? Has it been used for mad socialising over recent months? It has not. It has been used by people first and foremost to pay their rent and to put food on the table, and the Government is taking that money away from them today. Shame on it.

Some people will ask whether the country can continue to afford to pay out sums on this scale in payments of this type. It is not an unfair question because a debt of €30 billion will be built up from this year alone. What that points towards, however, is that it is not possible to keep making these payments without taking action on the issue of wealth taxes. Ten people in this country have a combined personal wealth of €50 billion, and the Government will not even entertain a debate on the question of a wealth tax. It turns its back on the opportunity to go after Apple for more than €14 billion but says we cannot afford to continue with these payments. We have to continue with them. The cutbacks should be reversed. People need this money to survive, and the country will be able to afford the payments if we go after the wealth with serious wealth taxes.

The Fianna Fáil Party, according to information we got at the weekend, now enjoys the support of one voter in ten in this country. In 2011 it had a meltdown election in which it got 17% of the vote. That is nearly double the support it has at the moment. The Fianna Fáil Party is headed towards the rocks, and if it wants to drive its ship right onto the rocks and wreck it, it can continue with policies such as this. It will pay a price for it.

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