Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We have to get real here. Deputy Damien English, a junior Minister, is present, but we have no interest in the working poor, the small farmer and the so-called "daoine beaga" - I do not mean in stature - or ordinary humble people of Ireland. "Let them eat cake" - if she was here now - is the attitude of the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste. Globalists is what they are, looking after big global companies to bring in all the technology companies and everything else and screw our own unfortunate people. I said yesterday they will die on the side of the road. They will be starved with the hunger.

Farmers will be forced out of business and forced into poverty because of the fertiliser crisis and everything else. It is shocking the way workers are treated in this country. I am an employer and many of my colleagues are, and we try to have a good relationship with our staff and look after them and nurture them, but big companies have not time at the checkouts due to how quick they are scanning the products in. They are making them like machines. It is all part of the global economy we bought into, with Deputy English's party leader and his friendship with the famous Prime Minister Trudeau, and with all this belief in the G7. To hell with the ordinary people. We commemorate 1916 and we commemorate 1923. They commemorated something else in Dublin Castle two weeks ago. I would not go near the place because they are turning in their graves with the kind of vultures they left behind them, which is what you have turned into, supporting all the big business and everybody else and forgetting about the ordinary people.

Look at the wages, as Deputy Tóibín said, of the HSE and the rise in wages Mr. Watt got to go from one Department to another, and he out in Dubai last week looking at best practice of hospitals. They would not know a hospital from an elephant because they have no experience in the field but they can get a pay rise any time they like.

The unequal divide-and-conquer attitude that they have in government here is shocking, disgraceful and despicable, but it is out of the handbook from all over the world to keep the people down. The Government will get a rude awakening. I have said it before. They are waiting in the long grass. There is a fair bit of long grass this year because we had a very mild winter. It will be well grazed by the time the election is called and the Government will have no place to hide. They can run but they cannot hide. They should hang their heads in shame.

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