Results 5,341-5,360 of 7,975 for speaker:Joe Higgins

Leaders' Questions (3 Nov 2011)

Joe Higgins: This is because the road the Tánaiste's colleague, Mr. Papandreou, has taken, and New Democracy before him, during the past two years has been a disaster. That is clear and the suffering of the Greek people is testament to it. The policy of austerity is ruining Greece and its people. The Tánaiste says one cannot spend what one does not have. But apparently the Labour Party and Fine Gael...

Leaders' Questions (3 Nov 2011)

Joe Higgins: What did Connolly do, having found the European people confronted with the looming catastrophe of the First World War and abandoned by virtually all, even the social democratic parties which slavishly followed their imperialist masters supporting the war? He stood boldly out and called for mass resistance and an alternative. He said we should resist until the last capitalist bond and...

Leaders' Questions (3 Nov 2011)

Joe Higgins: -----there are non-socialist economists who carry great authority in economic circles such as Nourieal Roubini, Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and others. They all now say categorically that continuing the programme of austerity is a disaster. Will the Government learn the lessons from Greece and fundamentally abandon the disastrous policy-----

Leaders' Questions (3 Nov 2011)

Joe Higgins: -----of salvaging the living standards of working class people, pensioners and the poor and embark on an alternative policy of public investment, massive job creation and the re-creation of our economy?

Leaders' Questions (3 Nov 2011)

Joe Higgins: I shook hands with him in the depths of the night in Citywest

Leaders' Questions (3 Nov 2011)

Joe Higgins: Will it ever dawn on the Tánaiste that the Government's programme of savage austerity, far from creating jobs and recovery, will plunge our society into ever deeper economic crisis? Is this not clear to the Tánaiste given the shortfall of €383 million in VAT to date reflecting a stagnation in retail sales and services and as a result of the savage austerity that the Government continues...

Leaders' Questions (3 Nov 2011)

Joe Higgins: The Tánaiste slavishly submits to the diktats of the financial markets and those faceless institutions that hold the lives of tens and hundreds of millions of Europeans in their grip. The Tánaiste has no word of opposition to say or an alternative to put.

Leaders' Questions (3 Nov 2011)

Joe Higgins: Will it ever dawn on the Tánaiste that capitalism is in a systemic crisis at this time and it will not find a way out? Major private conglomerates are on a strike of capital. Only by a complete change of policy and particularly by major public investment in infrastructure and services can we recreate and rebuild our economy, recreate the tens of thousands of jobs needed and put people back...

Leaders' Questions (3 Nov 2011)

Joe Higgins: If the Labour Party does not bring such an alternative, should it not merge into the grey mass that surrounds it on the Government benches rather than pretend there is something distinct anymore called the Irish Labour Party?

Leaders' Questions (3 Nov 2011)

Joe Higgins: Obviously since they are being denied any impact whatsoever on Government policy, the only way the Labour Party backbenchers can find their voice is by clamour in the Parliament.

Leaders' Questions (3 Nov 2011)

Joe Higgins: In case the Tánaiste did not hear me, I stated precisely that the country should not take the road Greece has taken. That is the point I made.

European Council: Statements (2 Nov 2011)

Joe Higgins: The Taoiseach said that one of the issues at the summit was that of contagion. Does he accept that so-called contagion, as it relates to Italy and Spain, is not an uncontrollable disease, but the threatened actions of financial speculators who would take the opportunity to blackmail the people of Italy and Spain by implementing usurious interest rates because of their control of the...

European Council: Statements (2 Nov 2011)

Joe Higgins: Dictatorship.

European Council: Statements (2 Nov 2011)

Joe Higgins: Dictatorship of the markets.

European Council: Statements (2 Nov 2011)

Joe Higgins: Can the Taoiseach address the contradiction between democracy and the dictatorship of the markets?

European Council: Statements (2 Nov 2011)

Joe Higgins: The Taoiseach can do better than that.

European Council: Statements (2 Nov 2011)

Joe Higgins: The process whereby the prime minister of a country goes to a European summit and then reports back to the national parliament is supposedly a democratic process. What is happening here this morning is happening in parliaments all over the European Union, but far from being an exercise in democracy, it is a masquerade and a sham because the democratically elected prime ministers, presidents...

Order of Business (2 Nov 2011)

Joe Higgins: I oppose this proposal and ask the Taoiseach for a variation of the order. In one hour, €700 million will be transferred from the people of this State to bondholders of whom the Taoiseach says, "I don't know who they are". Therefore, €700 million of our people's resources is to be handed over to anonymous, faceless and unaccountable individuals and entities. If a highwayman with a...

Order of Business (2 Nov 2011)

Joe Higgins: -----were to go into a bank today and stage an armed hold-up, the Deputies of Fine Gael and Labour would be up in arms demanding retribution. That is what is happening to our people today.

Order of Business (2 Nov 2011)

Joe Higgins: These are not widows' and orphans' funds.