Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Can I continue? Many of them are coming in here for refugee status and many are economic migrants. They will be coming back in. If the Government members are honest with themselves, they know from knocking at the doors they are meeting parents who have tears in their eyes because their brightest and best and loved ones are abroad. They have married, settled down and are having children and grandchildren abroad. That is the reality because they cannot afford to get a house. They cannot afford to buy a house. They cannot afford to put a deposit together. In the country, where they have the wherewithal and can get a mortgage, they cannot get planning permission because of Government policies and what the Greens have done. The Greens have the tail wagging the dog that you lay down on every single policy. These kinds of sops and once-off payments and double payments are gone like snow off a ditch the day after. The bleak period in January will come after Christmas and people will be under twice the pressure. Who comes in then? The moneylenders. The Government has no interest in fairness. Fianna Fáil used to be the party of the little people like the ordinary PAYE workers, small business and small farmers but it has abandoned that completely to big business, the moguls, the beef barons and you name it. That is who Fianna Fáil now protects. Our earlier amendment was to stop the vulture funds but no, it could not do that.

I refer to what the Government is allowing in respect of four in every ten homes built. Goodness knows the difficulty in getting them built, given the costs and not having enough tradesmen. We have not enough skilled people and we have not the wherewithal to build the houses and reach the targets promised by the Government, which it keeps on breaking. It keeps on making more targets as announced again today. It will break them again. It has no sense of shame whatsoever. It could tackle that as well. There was a fight before the budget when kites were flown by one of the Ministers of State - I think it was Deputy Richmond - that stamp duty was going to be put up to 20% for those people buying four in every ten new homes built in this city and every other city. For me, that is 40% of them. Lots of young people who are saving and living in apartments and flats paying massive rents could have some chance of competing there, but no, these people are coming in. Did the Government increase the stamp duty to 20%? It went to 15% and it deserves a clap on the back. The Rural Independent Group and I wanted 50%, because these people should not be allowed buy our homes. These are companies from Canada and America. We had a proposal in our pre-budget submission that unless they are from Ireland, are providing employment or have good reason to be here, then they could not be allowed buy up these houses. Try to house our own Irish.

I walked down Grafton Street to Clarendon Street today. I thought I had seen it all but people were stopping. There was a poor individual lying in an alleyway in his clothes and covered all over in tin foil to keep out the rain. There was seagull pulling and pecking and tearing at it. I never saw anything like it. I took a photograph. I eventually went and hunted the seagull. It was pulling it away and he was trying to pull it back. My goodness. That is a real vulture, and they are the kinds of vulture this Government allows; the grey crows that destroy the lambs. How does the Minister sleep in his bed at night thinking of the ordinary people, and throwing sops here and there? He talks about the working men who go to work in the morning and they are pilloried. They do not get anything. They do not get the SUSI grants, the medical cards, the GP cards or the back to school allowance. They get nothing and they are pilloried and crucified. They do not get the double payments or the bonuses. Why should they not get them? They are the people who pay the taxes to pay all of our wages, mine included. No, the Government decides to support people who in some cases do not want to work. There are many people who are not able to work and I understand that totally. The Government talks about full employment and throws out this money just to buy the election. It is nothing short of it.

Both parties have had power now since the inception of the State. There was the codology of confidence and supply for four years, and now Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are in a hybrid or a tandem or whatever you like. They cannot separate the hybrid or cut the tandem in half now to go out to the people again. They have lost their identities and morphed into one. They are serving the European economic masters of Brussels and the World Economic Forum. People ask me how they can stay there and do that and sit back and pass it off. They are not serving the Constitution that elected them to this House. They are not serving the Irish people. They are not serving under the oath of office they have to serve and look after our people. They are more interested in prancing around the world stage and being the good boys in Europe and for big multinational conglomerates. That is who they want to serve now and they have lost their identity completely from the days of the founding members like Lemass and others. They have lost it completely.

In this situation, they are praising paltry payments and singing about them, and they are in the newsletters that are going out. Some of the respected backbenchers suggested that we were welcoming it as well on social media. I certainly was not anyway. As a business person since 1982, I know what it is like. I know a gimmick when I see a gimmick. If it walks like a duck, it is a duck. It is quack-quack here, quack-quack there and quack-quack everywhere with the Government. Hopefully when they meet the geese and the ducks, they will meet a few ganders as well and they might put manners on them if nobody else will, because they are well able to. They are not serving the ordinary working people or ordinary struggling families who are trying to pay for school uniforms and bus tickets.

These people cannot get anything. They work and work. There was a great man in my parish, in County Port Láirge but it was my parish, who made a statement 20 years ago. He was called Jeremy Hallahan. He said he used to work in the woods felling timber and taking it out with horses in awful conditions on high ground that could not be traversed by anything else. He told me only fools and horses were working now and as most of the horses were nearly dead, that would leave the fools. That is how people feel. They are not being rewarded, respected or supported. They are not getting any fair crack of the whip at all - although they get up early in the morning and go to work - none. What happens if the Government disincentivises people from working? They do not work. Then you have situations where the second and third generations are not working. It is an unequal and unfair situation.

I am not even talking about the Minister's outright and blank refusal to tackle the super-rich, to have taxes on them. They are people who have done good work, were creative and were successful enough to become billionaires but they need to be paying their fair share. The Minister, however, will not touch them under any circumstances. I would say that under threat of death the Minister would not tax them, whatever hold they have over the Government. It is a sad country. We fought so dearly to get our freedom here and now the Government is beholden to all these people, such as the World Economic Forum and our European masters. That is what it is doing.

Commissioner McGrath is in an inquisitorial situation today for a fanciful position in justice. That is all the Government gets, sops from Europe. We saw with the bailout what we got from our friends in Europe. We got money at 2.9% from the IMF and we paid almost 6% to our so-called friends in Europe. Mar fhocal scoir, I remind the Minister why the USC is here. It is because of the bailout when the Government let off major investments and people in here who had insurance bonds. I had many an argument with the late Brian Lenihan over this.

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