Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

On a personal level I wish the Minister and his family the very best. He has been a civil and thoughtful adversary for the years we have both been in the House. He never held back in letting us know what he thought about our perspective on politics and economics. I am not going to hold back in saying that I think the legacy that has been left behind by the years of Fine Gael Government since I have been in the House, and Deputy Donohoe has been in the House, is not one to be proud of. He simply cannot escape responsibility for a disastrous and ongoing housing and homelessness crisis, which has plunged so many people into the misery of emergency accommodation, rotting for years and sometimes decades on housing lists and being crucified by unaffordable rents. Indeed, as reported by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul today, as we head towards Christmas and a cold snap record numbers of people in low-income and middle-income families are begging for help to get them through the Christmas months. This is from a Government that has record budget surpluses.

The truth is that years of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Government have left us with this disastrous housing and homelessness crisis, with a cost-of-living crisis imposing misery and hardship on working-class people and on the least well-off, and with people with disabilities being forced, as we speak, to organise protests in the run-in to Christmas over what has been done to them in the most recent budget, which is taking €1,000 a year off them. The other side of the coin, and this is the so-called political centres legacy, is that under Deputy Donohoe's ministerships profits for the corporations have quadrupled. While people who are poor are suffering, to the extent of not even having a roof over their heads, the profits of the big corporations, the landlords and the vulture funds have gone through the roof. Energy companies are recording record profits while elderly people will be terrified in the coming days as this cold snap hits, afraid to turn on the heating because they cannot afford to pay the bills. They will not be getting a cost-of-living support during the Christmas period. Deputy Donohoe cannot escape responsibility for this legacy. The truth, I am sorry to say, is that the World Bank is an institution of global capitalism that, frankly, has a pretty dire record. It is located in Washington DC where it lends out money to poor countries; demands austerity and privatisation; and, essentially, serves the interests of American and western big business, often at the expense of some of the poorest countries in the world.

On a personal level, I wish the Minister the best of luck but he knows we have very different views on what is good for this country and the need to radically change the priorities he has pursued.

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