Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I too welcome this motion. Certainly, we cannot invest the €500 million at this time to be used in the rainy day fund. It is foggy tonight but it is raining every day. I think the Minister is in the fog and is hiding behind his mask because he has handled this economy appallingly with his Thatcherite policies by allowing the banks to run away and do what they like, like a runaway train. Deputy O’Donoghue has just outlined what they have done. They are not giving out the money and should not have been given or have got their greasy paws on the funding that we got from the European Central Bank because they have failed the people. They are fleecing them. There are evictions and every type of bullying and intimidation being carried on in our systems. The children’s hospital will be some monument to the Government, if it ever gets built. If the whole Government fitted inside it a time capsule could be put over it and see how it goes. The national broadband is a fiasco and it is fiasco after fiasco.

On Minister's pay, it costs over €1 million a year to keep the Minister in his job, between himself and his advisers. Can he not think or talk for himself without having so many advisers? I question the whole lot of ye: ye have plundered this country and economy. The Cabinet yet again today signed off for judges and even for party Whips to get a bigger allowance but it turned down and would not pay the nurses last week. It clapped for them but would not pay them. History will not be kind to this Government in the way it has the building houses as if it was building sand castles on the strand at the seaside. If one builds them there they will at least wash away in the tide but the Government is not even building them to get washed away in whatever kind of rain is going. If it was raining money the Government would be out with its umbrella turned upside down to see would it send it away. This is the kind of economics the Government is operating on. None of ye ever ran a business in your life; they know nothing about running an economy or a business.

That is the sad part about it but the saddest part of all is that they know it all. They do not take advice from anybody else; they are superior people. They clung on to power this time and said that they did not want to be in government but they are back in government to keep Deputy Martin in place just because he wanted his shot at the top job and the Tánaiste then gets back in the next time. History will not be kind to this Government when one considers all the people who are homeless and are sick on waiting lists. The way the Government handled the Covid-19 pandemic is nothing short of a disgrace. It thinks that it has money to fire away for everything. It will indemnify all the big pharma companies and to hell with anyone who will have an issue with or is injured by a vaccine. The Government will give them nothing but will look after the big people and to hell with na daoine beaga. I would say something that may be unnecessary and I will not say it but it starts with a “b” and ends with “l”. That is the way it is. Go raibh maith agat.

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