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

It is amazing what one learns when one listens very carefully during a Dáil debate. I was under the misapprehension that what the Government did in September was cut the PUP by €100 or €50. It turns out I was wrong and the payment was not cut at all. Many people believed that was what happened. They believed the Government, in taking €100 from them, had taken food out the mouths of their children or, by taking €50 from them, had endangered the roof over their heads. It turns out they were wrong. They should have listened to the Minister of State. He is a member of the Green Party, whose deputy leader said this week that the party needs to have a focus on social justice. He told us that the Government did not cut the payments in September but calibrated them in such a way as to link them to employment earnings. George Orwell said many years ago in his tremendous essay, "Politics and the English Language", that the abuse of language in politics "is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable". It is unfortunate to see the Green Party signing up to that type of language in this debate.

I have to give it to the Government that it is not being inconsistent on this issue. In fact, it is being entirely consistent in attempting to make working people pay for the Covid crisis. We can see that is the case when the Government introduces an increase in the minimum wage of 10 cent an hour, which is less than 1%. We see it in the move to end the mortgage moratorium and the blanket ban on evictions. We see it in the cut in the PUP of €100 or €50 a week, with the threat of more cuts to come. We will vote on this motion in this Chamber at 9.30 tonight. I urge every worker who had €100 or €50 taken in September, with the threat of more to come, to tune in and pay careful attention to who votes for a motion in favour of restoring the PUP and who votes against it. I urge them to focus in particular on the votes of Government backbenchers, including the Fianna Fáil Deputies who benefited from the votes of working people in the general election in February and the Green Party Deputies who got votes from young people looking for radical change. We will see very clearly when the votes are cast this evening which side of the debate people are placed.

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