Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I too am concerned about tariffs as there are more than 9,000 FDI jobs in Clonmel and thousands more of them in Dungarvan up the road from me. However, like Deputy Nolan, I too am concerned about the tariffs that our own Government has imposed on the ordinary people, such as the punitive carbon tax and the nearly 48% tax applied to anyone wanting to build a new home. I am talking about people building a home for themselves, not looking for houses from the State. The Government has taken punitive measures.

As for the bailout, I called it at the time and voted against it. It was a clean out when we had the crash and the EU charged us 6% interest yet the German and French bondholders were let off scot-free. We got money that time from the IMF at 2.9% interest. They are now supposed to be our friends. We the had the Fine Gael Party and the Tánaiste, who was Taoiseach at the time, meddling in the US election by describing one of the candidates, now-President Trump, as a gowl. God only knows. Another morning, he tweeted a photo of a baseball cap endorsing Kamala Harris which he got that morning in the post. That is such juvenile, pedantic and silly behaviour. Then some bright spark sent him over today to meet the US Secretary of Commerce. I was over there for St. Patrick's week at the time the Taoiseach was there. I met many Irish-Americans who were aghast at the way we had behaved. I met Pam Bondi, RFK Jr. and many other Congressmen and people. They were aghast, as were the voters among the Irish diaspora.

Here we are now stifling and crippling small businesses with bureaucracy on a daily basis. I thanks Deputy Nolan, who found out a couple years ago that we have 36,000 NGOs that are in front of the Government, behind the Government, tripping the Government and costing more than €6 billion a year. The sooner we get a wake-up call with tariffs and start to deal with the waste, the opulence and the naked, shameless way that these NGOs are milking our taxpayers, the better. There is also the fact that so much waste in government has been going on under successive Governments. We banned the turf. We have the farmers nearly put out of business with different issues supposedly from the EU. It is time we looked after small businesses and our small- and medium-sized farmers. Ní neart go cur le chéile. We should not allow the ranchers. We do not have any policy on wind turbines and solar panels. The best of land is being gobbled up and used. What are we going to do? We must look after our own house first and then we can work with the American people and the US Administration. They have been good to us always and we have those jobs here. I believe we can negotiate with President Trump and his team, rather than attacking him like the parties here are. Sinn Féin would not even go to America. I am wondering whether it was invited at all this year. That is a nice way to do business - abstention. It is used to abstention. It is time we got our house in order, looked after ourselves and kept the juvenile Tánaiste at home. We should put him in the dressing room somewhere rather than having him going out on our behalf after the insults he put on President Trump during the US presidential election campaign.

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