Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)

An raibh an Taoiseach ar na sráideanna nuair a tháinig na mílte daoine agus 130 eagraíocht Ghaeltachta amach le rá go bhfuil €55 milliún sa bhreis de dhíth orthu don Ghaeltacht? Tá an Rialtas ag déanamh neamhaird agus damáiste don Ghaeltacht arís agus arís eile agus sin fírinne an scéil.

This budget is going to come and go like the rest of them. Nothing I have heard here gives me hope that the crisis we face will be addressed. I fear that many people are in for a long and hard winter. When we were growing up, our parents taught us important lessons. We were told that if we showed up and worked hard, we could build and secure a good life for ourselves and our family. We were told that life would be affordable and we would have a fair chance to achieve the future we wanted. After 15 years of Fine Gael in government, that lesson, that expectation and that bedrock of life has been shattered for an entire generation. The Government has made the extortionate cost of living the new normal, crushing people's hopes and even aspirations. That is what this budget is about. It is not normal and it can never be acceptable that people who go out to work every single day are skirting inches from the poverty line. It can never be acceptable that households even two-incomes are borrowing from parents, just to pay the bills. It can never be acceptable that our young people are forced to the airports to go to Australia or Canada to seek the opportunity they should have here at home.

I have never seen election promises abandoned so quickly and so completely. In this budget, the Government made a conscious decision to prioritise the well-off, the landlords, the developers and the investors at the expense of ordinary workers. The Government has really shown its true colours. It has taken a calculated risk. It hopes that people will forget this by the time the next election comes around but I fear the people are going to remember this one because the Government has shafted them royally.

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