Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity)

The Taoiseach is eating into my time, which is very little. I want to start with where Deputy Donohoe is going with his new job. The World Bank and the IMF usually work together. Their policies drive inequality and austerity all around the globe. They decrease workers' rights, environmental considerations and life expectancy in any country they go into. We have a situation where 1% owns more than 95% of the wealth according to Oxfam, and where a dozen men roughly have the same amount of wealth as half of the entire planet. This is the system the World Bank presides over and that Deputy Donohoe will also preside over. Regarding the debt burden on African countries, 18.5% of the income of Africa is spent servicing the debt which Deputy Donohoe will be presiding over as well. This is more than many of them spend on healthcare.

I feel these points are very important because there is a lot of back clapping and wishing Deputy Donohoe well on his promotion but he has been rewarded for, I believe, being a loyal proponent of austerity and an implementer of it since 2014 when the IMF was in the country. He has presided over many budgets that really did inflict a lot of hardship. He is being rewarded for not implementing things like the occupied territories Bill and for recent budgets which, even though we are back in record surplus, disabled people and workers paid for very severely.

I want to mention also that this is a reshuffle of the Government and we are going to be voting specifically on Deputy Naughton. Again, this is nothing personal but she has been in charge of special education for quite a number of years and there has been a severe crisis in that area. I am not inspired with confidence because there has been a huge crisis in the need for autism classes and facilities for people who are neurodivergent, which she has stood over. We need more than a reshuffle. We need a new Government because for the year it has been in power it has severely disappointed and made ordinary working people pay for the crisis.

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