Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent Ireland Party) | Oireachtas source

What is our first problem when we see tariffs? Trump met our Taoiseach before St. Patrick’s Day and invited Conor McGregor to meet him on St. Patrick’s Day. That is what he thinks of Ireland. He looks at Ireland as a tax haven for companies but what he needs to realise is that it is a tax nightmare for workers. Trump also needs to realise that one in every ten people in the US claims Irish ancestry. I ask the people in the US who have Irish in them to make that quite clear to him. He also knows that, to Europe, Ireland is a pimple on its backside. Europe does not really care what happens to us because we are that minute.

The damage Trump has done in the world markets and the uncertainty he has caused are already wreaking havoc in Europe, including Ireland, and are scaring people considerably. As it stands, this country cannot withstand tariffs from the US. It cannot, because of its size and nature, withstand world economic uncertainty. It cannot withstand it because of regulations applied to our agri- and business sectors that mean we probably have some of the highest taxes in Europe to try to survive.

I went across the road yesterday to try to support a local business and Deputy O'Flynn was with me. We went in to get a cup of coffee and up on the wall it showed the breakdown for a cup of coffee in this country. If you look down through it, 50 cent of it is VAT on a cup of coffee. That is for something small that somebody might want. That person straight across the road from Leinster House is probably the cheapest person in Dublin to go to for a cup of coffee. There is a full breakdown of what it costs, from the lid all the way to the wages and the whole way along, to show what it means to survive in this country. We are facing tariffs in this country. We are also facing the amount of money this country has made in taxes and the lack of value for money for what we have done.

The Irish Timesreported on the mistake that was made in the last economic crisis in this country - the lack of putting in infrastructure. If we put in infrastructure, it brings down the price of housing because it is in. If we put in infrastructure, it brings down the price of travelling across this country. In this country at the moment, however, for every euro people spend on fuel to go to work, they are paying 50 cent in tax on diesel and 43 cent on petrol. People go to work and then they pay tax on their wages. They come out then and pay taxes on every single thing they buy. If a person never works a day in this country and gets to a ripe old age and needs to go to a nursing home, he or she automatically qualifies for everything in the fair deal scheme. However, if someone works in this country and has any few bob in savings and wants to leave it to the grandchildren, he or she has to pay if it is over a certain amount. This is what the tariffs are going to mean for this country. We are already exhausted trying to keep going and put food on the table for the people who are here working and the vulnerable people we are trying to cater for, and not one person in Ireland who works has any problem with looking after the vulnerable. However, we have a massive problem on the wastage of money and the unaccountability of wasted money in the public sector from the point of view of the Government and Departments. That is our problem. The tariffs we have coming down on top at the moment are going to put this country in major trouble.

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