Results 5,021-5,040 of 7,975 for speaker:Joe Higgins

Cabinet Sub-Committees (31 Jan 2012)

Joe Higgins: That is not appropriate.

Leaders' Questions (31 Jan 2012)

Joe Higgins: Is the truth not that the fiscal compact is a treaty for permanent austerity and therefore provides for permanent attacks on the living standards and public services of ordinary Europeans? Is the reality not that the obsession of the Government at the summit was to secure a wording for the austerity treaty that it hoped would avoid a referendum by having the initial German Government demand...

Leaders' Questions (31 Jan 2012)

Joe Higgins: They must be delighted with the Taoiseach for blaming the Irish people for the disaster of their system, paying billions to salvage Irish, French, German and other banks on the backs of the Irish people and then agreeing to austerity in perpetuity to pay for all of this. Does the Taoiseach agree with his Minister for Transport, Deputy Varadkar, that Irish people are essentially so stupid they...

Leaders' Questions (31 Jan 2012)

Joe Higgins: I would have thought they were beneath the Minister.

Leaders' Questions (31 Jan 2012)

Joe Higgins: Does the Taoiseach have any inkling that what he agreed last night, namely, permanent austerity and cutbacks, will have a drastic effect on employment and bring about the opposite of job creation? For the first time in a long while, I noticed cynical propaganda emerging from the European Union to the effect that the economic crisis is about to be turned around and there has been some talk of...

Leaders' Questions (31 Jan 2012)

Joe Higgins: That was window dressing to get the treaty through.

Leaders' Questions (31 Jan 2012)

Joe Higgins: No new funds are available.

Leaders' Questions (31 Jan 2012)

Joe Higgins: I will give the Taoiseach plenty of constructive suggestions.

Social Partnership (31 Jan 2012)

Joe Higgins: Question 4: To ask the Taoiseach the discussions he has had with the social partners since the beginning of the year. [3678/12]

Written Answers — Hospital Services: Hospital Services (26 Jan 2012)

Joe Higgins: Question 229: To ask the Minister for Health if he will instruct the Health Service Executive to open all the beds in Dingle Hospital, County Kerry, to full capacity with immediate effect in view of the pressure for long-stay places for the elderly in the Dingle Peninsula. [4678/12]

Leaders' Questions (26 Jan 2012)

Joe Higgins: In recent days press reports on briefings given by the Minister for Social Protection and senior officials in her Department have pointed to the beginning of a campaign to exert pressure on and harass unemployed people. Apparently, the Minister is to unveil next week a programme entitled, Pathways to Work. It has been stated every unemployed person in the State will be given a date by which...

Leaders' Questions (26 Jan 2012)

Joe Higgins: There is one cure for mass unemployment. That is job creation. The Government needs to discontinue its austerity policies, which are destroying tens of thousands of jobs in the domestic economy. That approach is the reason an additional 200,000 people are on the live register, compared to three and a half years ago. The creation of real jobs with decent wages is the answer to unemployment.

Leaders' Questions (26 Jan 2012)

Joe Higgins: These so-called labour activation measures are an excuse for the Government's failure to create jobs over the past year.

Leaders' Questions (26 Jan 2012)

Joe Higgins: Unfortunately, the relentless loss of jobs in the domestic economy will continue as a result of the Government's policies. In response to a question asked by my colleague, Deputy Daly, the Minister for Social Protection said it is expected that there will be an additional 45,200 net redundancies this year, unfortunately. The Minister added that there will be a further 40,000 redundancies in...

Leaders' Questions (26 Jan 2012)

Joe Higgins: -----are straining at the leash to resume the headlines they last used in the late 1980s about "spongers" and "malingerers" on the dole. It is coming close to the surface. They did not dare to use such headlines over the past three years because it was clear who are the culprits and who are the victims. Perhaps they think such headlines can be used again now. Does the Tánaiste want the...

Leaders' Questions (26 Jan 2012)

Joe Higgins: That is not where the jobs are.

Order of Business (26 Jan 2012)

Joe Higgins: The variation should be agreed by the Government. What is being proposed for the Water Services (Amendment) Bill is a mockery of what one would imagine a legislative process to be. Fine Gael and the Labour Party, the parties currently in power, railed for years against the indiscriminate use of the guillotine by their predecessors. Was it all bluster? Did they mean it or did they not?...

Promissory Notes: Motion (Resumed) (25 Jan 2012)

Joe Higgins: I thank the United Left Alliance Deputies for tabling this motion and I thank the Deputies who supported it. There is no doubt in my mind that in the major financial centres of the world, from Wall Street to London and Paris and further afield, there have been celebratory lunches and champagne receptions today organised by the sharks of the financial markets who, courtesy of the Irish...

Promissory Notes: Motion (Resumed) (25 Jan 2012)

Joe Higgins: The Government has set 31 March as a date to scare people for registration for these taxes. The campaign against these taxes is saying to the people that we should arrive at 17 March with the bulk of households refusing to register and pay and boycotting these iniquitous new taxes. That will then create a situation where this Government has to think. We will hold the line with a massive...

Promissory Notes: Motion (Resumed) (25 Jan 2012)

Joe Higgins: The order of the House was not-----