Results 3,941-3,960 of 7,975 for speaker:Joe Higgins

Financial Resolution No. 2: Tobacco Products Tax (5 Dec 2012)

Joe Higgins: This is the 12th budget for which I have stood up in this Chamber and I always have come in at this time to deal with the same hypocrisy that is before Members. This has nothing to do with health in terms of cigarettes or alcohol addiction. It pertains to a grab for funds and, therefore, it must be opposed. This is part of a €1,000 per year grab, as it will affect ordinary...

Financial Resolution No. 2: Tobacco Products Tax (5 Dec 2012)

Joe Higgins: As part of the Government's disastrous austerity agenda, I oppose it.

Financial Resolution No. 14: Capital Acquisitions Tax (5 Dec 2012)

Joe Higgins: The protesting Labour Deputies duly doth protest too much entirely tonight. They have come in a cohort to drown out, in reality, not so much their dissident colleagues, as they have just been trying to do, but the weakness of their fundamental economic and political position.

Financial Resolution No. 14: Capital Acquisitions Tax (5 Dec 2012)

Joe Higgins: The Labour Deputies have been in a hapless position since March 2011, when they took the fatal decision that they would continue the disastrous strategy of Fianna Fáil to bail out-----

Financial Resolution No. 14: Capital Acquisitions Tax (5 Dec 2012)

Joe Higgins: -----bondholders and bankers at the expense of the working people they were supposed to represent, and they have defended the indefensible since then.

Financial Resolution No. 14: Capital Acquisitions Tax (5 Dec 2012)

Joe Higgins: The Tánaiste lectured the House on procedure, etc. He came up with a mishmash of three or four motions-----

Financial Resolution No. 14: Capital Acquisitions Tax (5 Dec 2012)

Joe Higgins: We have heard complaints from Deputies all night about motions, some of which they agree with and some of which they disagree with, being taken in one vote. It is quite ridiculous. The Tánaiste lectured the House and the cacophony on my right supported him-----

Financial Resolution No. 14: Capital Acquisitions Tax (5 Dec 2012)

Joe Higgins: -----in regard to some of the alternative and solidly evidenced proposals that we on the left tabled. The Deputies should not demean or downgrade the information that is given through parliamentary questions from the Department of Finance, which is what was done tonight. For example, when I submitted a question to the Minister for Finance asking for a certain schema to be worked out in...

Financial Resolution No. 14: Capital Acquisitions Tax (5 Dec 2012)

Joe Higgins: If I were Deputy Humphreys I would not have the audacity to make that point, as he spent his contribution simply abusing other Members of the Dáil, including his dissident colleagues. He has some neck.

Financial Resolution No. 14: Capital Acquisitions Tax (5 Dec 2012)

Joe Higgins: In case Deputy Humphreys has not done so, he should read the work of Connolly and Larkin, the founders of his party. He will see that he is dealing with-----

Financial Resolution No. 14: Capital Acquisitions Tax (5 Dec 2012)

Joe Higgins: -----a sick financial market system whereby-----

Financial Resolution No. 14: Capital Acquisitions Tax (5 Dec 2012)

Joe Higgins: -----we currently have €3 trillion in accumulated profits which they refuse to invest on a Europe-wide basis in jobs and services.

Financial Resolution No. 14: Capital Acquisitions Tax (5 Dec 2012)

Joe Higgins: That is the sickness of the financial markets system the Government is attempting to bail out.

Financial Resolution No. 14: Capital Acquisitions Tax (5 Dec 2012)

Joe Higgins: Of course we can support the capital gains tax increases, but they are minuscule. They are puny and pathetic, compared with what would be introduced if we had a Labour Party or a socialist party in a majority in the Dáil or as a significant Opposition. The Government would not dream of coming to the House with such rubbish to pretend to be doing something radical-----

Financial Resolution No. 14: Capital Acquisitions Tax (5 Dec 2012)

Joe Higgins: -----when the whole thrust of the budget is to continue the disastrous austerity policy and bail out the bankers and speculators at the cost of working class people.

Financial Resolution No. 14: Capital Acquisitions Tax (5 Dec 2012)

Joe Higgins: Does Deputy Martin want more tax on the rich?

Financial Resolutions 2013 - Financial Resolution No. 15: General (Resumed) (6 Dec 2012)

Joe Higgins: Budget 2013 constitutes a savage new twist to the pernicious austerity agenda relentlessly pursued so far by the Fine Gael and Labour Party coalition Government, but at huge cost to ordinary people and to society. It is all simply to rescue the European financial market system together with Irish bankers and speculators from their reckless super profit-seeking gambles in the Irish property...

Financial Resolutions 2013 - Financial Resolution No. 15: General (Resumed) (6 Dec 2012)

Joe Higgins: It portrayed six specific attacks, ranging from cuts in child benefit to VAT increases, every single one of which Labour has swallowed. Do they remember what the end of the advertisement stated?

Financial Resolutions 2013 - Financial Resolution No. 15: General (Resumed) (6 Dec 2012)

Joe Higgins: The end of the advertisement stated, "Fine Gael: every little hurts!". Is the Labour Party suffering such delusion that it believes the savage cuts by Fine Gael hurt, but, when Labour blesses those cuts, somehow they do not? Is the Labour Party suffering from delusion that savage cuts in the living standards administered by Fine Gael might hurt badly, but when supported by the Labour Party,...

Financial Resolutions 2013 - Financial Resolution No. 15: General (Resumed) (6 Dec 2012)

Joe Higgins: Hopefully we will hear no more of this ruse. Calling it a local property tax is another cynical ploy. If it is a local property tax, why is its collection centralised in the Revenue agency, which is, itself, highly centralised at national level? That of course arises from a recognition that the imposition of the household tax last year was resisted bitterly by an active boycott. To this...