Results 18,901-18,920 of 50,830 for speaker:Micheál Martin
- Nomination of Members of the Government: Motion (11 Jul 2014)
Micheál Martin: Since the election, the Tánaiste has specialised in a major conjuring trick of both being part of the Government and distancing herself from it. Deputy Howlin would know all about that. Most journalists have at some point printed articles about how unhappy the Tánaiste has been with the Labour Party’s performance in government. She has encouraged the idea that the worst...
- Nomination of Members of the Government: Motion (11 Jul 2014)
Micheál Martin: We have been told that social housing is to be a new priority for the Labour Party.
- Nomination of Members of the Government: Motion (11 Jul 2014)
Micheál Martin: There is no doubt that there is currently a major social housing crisis, which has escalated dramatically in the past year.
- Nomination of Members of the Government: Motion (11 Jul 2014)
Micheál Martin: The truth hurts. As every Deputy knows, the biggest driver of this has been the restriction of the rent supplement scheme introduced by the Tánaiste. Every day new cases emerge of families being forced into critical situations. The Minister who proposed and implemented this policy is now Tánaiste and is now telling us how concerned she is about social housing.
- Nomination of Members of the Government: Motion (11 Jul 2014)
Micheál Martin: We are told now that the Labour Party is taking over responsibility for the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government to control the housing agenda. This must be a great surprise to Deputies Penrose and Jan O'Sullivan, who have held responsibility for housing at Cabinet for the past three and a half years. Who do people think they are codding? The Labour Party has had...
- Nomination of Members of the Government: Motion (11 Jul 2014)
Micheál Martin: If the Government was sincere about social housing, the first thing it would do is to abandon its policy on rent allowance.
- Nomination of Members of the Government: Motion (11 Jul 2014)
Micheál Martin: The first thing the Government should do is abandon-----
- Nomination of Members of the Government: Motion (11 Jul 2014)
Micheál Martin: -----its policy on rent allowance, which is causing huge problems. Government members can shout and heckle all they like.
- Nomination of Members of the Government: Motion (11 Jul 2014)
Micheál Martin: Anybody who knows anything knows it is a real issue. The rent allowance changes are forcing people into squalor and away from their communities. That is the bottom line and the truth.
- Nomination of Members of the Government: Motion (11 Jul 2014)
Micheál Martin: This is the same Government that introduced the property tax and is doubling it this year despite the fact that more than 93,000 mortgages have been in arrears for over three months and 35,314 homeowners have not been able to pay their mortgages for over two years.
- Nomination of Members of the Government: Motion (11 Jul 2014)
Micheál Martin: Despite this, Fine Gael and the Labour Party, rather than introducing an independent mortgage resolution office, as suggested over three years ago by Fianna Fáil, insist that the mortgage issue should be left in the hands of the banks.
- Nomination of Members of the Government: Motion (11 Jul 2014)
Micheál Martin: The much heralded insolvency legislation has not delivered tangible benefits. At the end of March, only four insolvency arrangements had been concluded.
- Nomination of Members of the Government: Motion (11 Jul 2014)
Micheál Martin: This brings into clear focus the warning made by Fianna Fáil when that legislation was going through the Dáil.
- Nomination of Members of the Government: Motion (11 Jul 2014)
Micheál Martin: The Tánaiste may well have stored her "Gilmore for Taoiseach" posters in the garden shed, but she has no such alibi for the large and still growing list of broken promises and unfair decisions for which she and her colleagues have been responsible.
- Nomination of Members of the Government: Motion (11 Jul 2014)
Micheál Martin: One of the great challenges remains not just the creation of jobs but the creation of decent and sustainable jobs.
- Nomination of Members of the Government: Motion (11 Jul 2014)
Micheál Martin: The Government’s jobs policy to date has been about claiming credit for jobs rather than actually making an impact. This is the Government that closed enterprise centres throughout the country so that they could be renamed and reopened with a fanfare.
- Nomination of Members of the Government: Motion (11 Jul 2014)
Micheál Martin: The same has happened with many enterprise and innovation initiatives. The most recent Government report on action on jobs goes as far as to claim as a new action research centres that have been open for over a decade.
- Nomination of Members of the Government: Motion (11 Jul 2014)
Micheál Martin: We need a Minister who puts aside the spin and gets serious about the crisis still faced by SMEs. They have no access to finance, face punitive charges and are tired of a Government that claims everything is fine when it manifestly is not.
- Nomination of Members of the Government: Motion (11 Jul 2014)
Micheál Martin: The two-tier recovery will be entrenched unless our SMEs are supported, and it is significant that this is not a priority for the reshuffled Government.
- Nomination of Members of the Government: Motion (11 Jul 2014)
Micheál Martin: Retailers and business in towns across Ireland are in deep trouble and no radical change in direction has been heralded for them.