Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)

They will not be able to put forward arguments for this reversal. The problem is that this came from a cross-party consensus. When the Committee of Public Accounts produced its excellent report following the DIRT inquiry its first recommendation was that this money should be obtained for disadvantaged communities to give them a boost. The Government accepted all the recommendations and put in place a scheme whereby they could be implemented. Why are we seeing a U-turn on this policy in the past two weeks?