David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

A number of colleagues have raised the very important matter of the financial condition in this country. I was very happy to follow the invigorating speech by Senator Marie-Louise O'Donnell and her suggestion that we should follow the money trail. We can follow it even further than she suggested. We can follow it to where it ended up, in the French and German banks. I say this because this is the first meeting of this House since the visit of Dr. Wolfgang Schäuble, the German Finance Minister. I was astonished to hear him say that he wished to compliment Ireland on how well we had done and how useful we were in order that we could be pointed at internationally as an example of the success of the plan. This is reminiscent of the Famine which was a direct result of the ruthless application of a rigid financial system and theory from the centre and which led to disaster. It had no concern for the welfare of the people. I think one would need to be Jonathan Swift to do justice to the ironies implicit in the fact that we are being complimented on how well we are doing, in a week which saw evictions in Ireland and the establishment of the second soup kitchen in Ireland, in Athlone, the first being in Galway.

I call on Dr. Wolfgang Schäuble to wake up and smell the soup. The odour should be in his nostrils from Greece to the Atlantic coast of Ireland. If he thinks that it is a success then I do not know what language he was speaking because it might have been German but it certainly was not sense.