Marc MacSharry (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The facts are these. Has the Minister of State choices? Yes, he does. Can he take them? Yes, he can. I have even suggested how and where he can take them. His inability to get this over the line in terms of his internal discussions with Ministers is his business and his problem. Does this have to happen to raise €25 million? No, it does not.

We can talk about the past. Yes, Fianna Fáil made mistakes, it lost 53 Dáil seats and its manifesto was rejected. The collective Fine Gael-Labour Party one was accepted and those parties threw it out the window as quick as they could and said they would cut threshold of €1,400 down to €900 and discriminate against women or men who live together as a couple. I would say the Minister of State, in his other profession as a lawyer, would have good craic with that one down in the Four Courts in terms of the rights and costs of a couple living together versus those of an individual. I would say there would be a good few euro made on arguing that case in the Law Library, as the Minister of State would well know. The Fianna Fáil did this and did that rhetoric is fine and I have no difficulty with it; I know the mistakes that were made. The Minister of State will recall that when I was a finance spokesperson on the opposite side of the House I was severely critical of the Minister for Health on a wide variety of issues.