Hear, hear.
Sentiment score: 0.00
Hear, hear.
Sentiment score: 0.00
We were hoping for a-----
Sentiment score: 0.42
It is not just that the Minister of State does not get it or that individuals do not get it; I genuinely think that the Government as an entity does not get it. Consider the counter-motion the Minister of State has put forward. It is a rehash and a restatement of what the Government said it would do in budget 2026. If we want to talk about budget 2026, we can talk about the fact that it leaves families 2% worse off. That is a fact. It is not me pointing that out; it is the ESRI. We could talk about the blunt measure of the poorly targeted VAT cut with 60% of the benefit going to fast-food chains and not to struggling local cafés. That is not me pointing that out; it is the Department of Finance. For the Government to come in here with a counter-motion and to literally reprint and rehash that statement is completely laughable. It is not even funny because what the Government does not get is that the Government has lost the dressing room. Look at the anger that was out there on the streets. A Government backbencher cannot put a post up on social media at the moment about getting a hole in the road filled without an abundance of stuff underneath it because people are furious. In many cases what the Government has done with that fury is come to a house fire with a can of petrol. Let us go back to the week of the fuel protests. Monsignor Micheál Martin came out to lecture the nation followed by Colonel O'Callaghan saying that he was going to send in the tanks. It was absolutely ridiculous. I wonder if the people who come into my clinic, the people I represent, have to get their Toyota Corollas and line them up outside O'Connell Street down by the GPO in order for the Government to actually listen to them? What we have put forward is very clear. It is targeted and we have said how we will pay for it. The Government's entire budgetary policy is based on the idea of people getting a fiver at budget time but six months later they get a €500 bill. The families the workers I represent in Limerick do not need a restatement of budget 2026 from this Government. They need action on the cost-of-living crisis. Their groceries have gone up, their energy bills have gone up, their rent has gone up, and their mortgage interest rates in many cases are going up. They are working full time and yet they have sweet feck all left at the end of the week. The fact of the matter is that we know from what the ESRI has said, and from what the Department has said, that the Government's budgetary measures are not prudent. They leave families worse off on average and they hit the lowest-income earning families the hardest. Yet, the Government's counter-motion today does not acknowledge any of this. This is about political choice. We have made our choice. We back workers, we back families and we back people who are struggling. We do not partake in leprechaun economics. We have set out very clearly how we would pay for this. The people that all of us represent deserve much more from this Government than being told to just wait until October and that help is coming not now but in six months.
Sentiment score: -0.07