Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The bit the Taoiseach does not point out is that as we face this ever-worsening homelessness and housing crisis, the fact is that house prices and rents in this country now mean that the most basic thing that people need to operate in our society, an affordable roof over their head, is out of the reach of the vast majority of working people. When you look at the chronic state of our health service, the understaffing and under-resourcing of special needs and our failure to vindicate the rights of people with disabilities and carers - all that hardship and suffering - the other side of the coin is record profits for the corporations. Vulture funds and wealth asset management companies are making a fortune. Property developers and speculators are profiteering off the back of other people's misery. That is the other side of the story. It is the legacy of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael priorities and always privileging the profits and interests of those at the top while hundreds of thousands of young, working and vulnerable people suffer. That is the reality and it is why the people, not Fine Gael, should now decide who leads the next Government. Those problems are too urgent and pressing to be left up to the people who have failed our society.

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