David Cullinane (Sinn Fein)

There is no doubt the burning issue in Ireland at present is the payment today of the unsecured, unguaranteed Anglo Irish Bank bond of €1.25 billion to people who invested, speculated and gambled. Some of these are secondary bondholders who will have bought those bonds at a cheap prices but will get paid in full, with interest. That payment is happening at a time when we can see services to schools being curtailed and teachers being lost, where in hospitals throughout the country managers and the HSE are trying to contain their budgets but, in doing so, are closing wards and theatres. Three thousand staff will be lost in the HSE this year, more than half of whom, some 1,500, will be front-line staff. It is outrageous that all these cuts are happening at a time when this country, namely, the Fine Gael-Labour Party Government, will sign off today on a cheque for €1.2 billion of taxpayers' money. This is in spite of the fact that in opposition those same parties lambasted the previous Government for doing exactly the same thing. They claimed that not one further cent would be paid unless burden-sharing was agreed.

How can the Leader, his party and his Government stand over all those cuts which impact deeply on the quality of life of people in this country while the same Government is signing off on that guaranteed unsecured bond? It makes absolutely no sense. An earlier speaker mentioned special managers. There are special advisors who are being paid, in full and over the odds, extreme amounts of money while children with special needs are seeing their services cut. That is the kind of Ireland we are living in today. It is not what the people of this country voted for. They voted for real change but we have not even discussed this matter properly. The fact that it was raised by one of the Independent Members, not by anybody from the Government parties, shows how out of touch people in this Chamber are when it comes to the real issues. The big issue today in Ireland is-----