Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy's party co-chairs the government in Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin has been in office there for most of the past 20 years. The Minister of Finance in Northern Ireland is a Sinn Féin MLA, a member of Deputy Doherty's party. Do not tell me Sinn Féin does not have fiscal levers and fiscal tools; it does. It just has to make choices to remove funding from one area and allocate it to another. That is what governments have to do. What the government Sinn Féin co-leads in Northern Ireland has done is minimal compared with what we have already done here to help people with the cost of living and is much less than what we are going to do today. What Sinn Féin has done in Northern Ireland is give people an energy grant to help them with the cost of energy, which it is then going to take back off them. It is not even a grant; it is a loan. They are going to get it this year and then the government is going to take it back off them next year and the year after. That is what Sinn Féin is doing in government and that is what it would do if it was in government here. It would do less than us, and if it did give people anything, it would probably take it back the year after-----

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