Is it happening? I am on the record of the Dáil as saying that I believe the cost of living in this country is going to have an adverse reaction. Today, for the people of Abbeyfeale who have worked in KOSTAL Ireland GmbH, there is the loss of 140 jobs, 95 operators and 45 non-operators. Where has the business gone? It has gone to China. EuroGiant is going into liquidation. It is happening because Ireland is now becoming a place where people are taxed out of existence. Over the past two years, I have been feeling that something is coming, and it is coming. This Government has to do something to help the working people in this country to have an existence in which they can survive, see a future for their children and in which they want to stay here and not leave these shores. That is what we have to achieve. KOSTAL Ireland GmbH has been in Abbeyfeale for many years. The people of Abbeyfeale have now lost 140 jobs to China. Last year the company asked for 60 voluntary redundancies, which it got. There were up to 400 people working in KOSTAL Ireland GmbH at one time. If they have lost 140 jobs today and 60 last year, is the writing not on the wall? What is that going to do for the people in Abbeyfeale and the businesses they support in Abbeyfeale and in the surrounding communities in Kerry and Limerick? Even people from my constituency work there. What are we going to say to them this evening? The price of food in this country has gone up. The price of rent has gone up. The price of fuel at the pumps has gone up. The price of the clothes on our backs has gone up. The cost of heating for houses has gone up. The cost of electricity has gone up. The cost of maintenance of vehicles has gone up. The cost of maintenance of the roads has gone down. There is no maintenance of the roads, so people are damaging their cars even going to work. Disabled people, including wheelchair users, have seen a reduction of €1,400. Yet, a Department can have an overspend of €1.2 billion on a hospital with no accountability. Some €360,000 was spent on a bike shed and there was no accountability. Another €1.2 million was spent on another security hut. We had the chairperson of Bord Bia in. He brought in beef from Brazil. This affects the farmers of this country who produce the highest quality food, setting the standards for across Europe. What does Europe want to do for a Mercosur deal? Europe wants to bring beef into this country, which contains carcinogens, and where there is no traceability or tagging systems and where there is accessibility to drugs for the animals. None of this is allowed here but they are allowed this. I was at the meeting and it feeds in to this. That person saw nothing wrong with him having his own meat company and being the chair of Bord Bia. I have been a self-employed contractor all my life. If I was working for the Department building social houses or any other project for the Government, would I be allowed to be the chair of the housing committee? Under legislation, the answer is "No". Yet, he can have a company and sit as the chair of Bord Bia, which is making every food producer in this country meet the highest standards, while he, the watchdog, brings in inferior foods into this country. That is not only a problem for Ireland; it is a problem for Europe. The cost of living here is off the wall if a person wants to build a house here. We had the pyrite scandal, redress for which the Government has not fully funded yet. The people who caused the pyrite problem here saw a 40% increase in concrete products in this country over five years. In January all concrete products increased in price by another 8%. What did the Government do? It put a 5% levy on all concrete products on top of that to pay for all their mistakes. None of them is held accountable. In terms of the squeezed middle in this country, if two people in a household are working, they are worse off. They qualify for nothing. Every cent they have goes to keeping their families fed and sometimes they have to do without food themselves and try to put a roof over their heads. Sometimes they are not able to make rent. How are we going to fix this? Are companies now looking at this country and deciding that it is no longer a viable place to have a business? That is a concern. The Government will always be remembered for turning its back on its own. These are families who have voted for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael for decades and celebrated 100 years. These are the people who walk the roads with them, helped them get to where they are and asked them to deliver for them. Only for social media, they would never have been found out about everything that the Fianna Fáíl and Fine Gael said to them that they were coming up to do for them, but their Members would vote the opposite way when they come up here. Televisions showed one side of it, but never showed the side of their voting record. That is why the whole system in this country has changed. The people were traditionally Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. One was known as the workers' party and the other was known as the farmers' party. Why does the Government think there were loads of farmers here today? Why does it think the Irish Farmers' Association, IFA, was outside Bord Bia's offices overnight? Why does it think 27,000 people turned up in Athlone? There is a shift. The traditional people who voted for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael no longer believe that they are representing them. All they believe is that the Government is representing their children leaving these shores and representing the people in this country who want everything, but the Government is not looking after the towns and villages that supported it. It is only looking at the balance. It does not look at the community supports that it can deliver for the people who have to work in another town or village. The Government looks at the bottom line which is "They only give so much money to society. They are costing us so much money." It closed down the banks in every town that they were in because the turnover was not there. That was about the convenience of having them in their area. It was bringing in the footfall to area that supported other businesses. Infrastructure in this country, such as water and sewerage schemes, has been promised in places in Limerick for 46 years. It is infrastructure where we could be building houses for the past 20, 30 or 40 years. Now, we are going to areas and the planning laws say, "Sorry, there is no capacity." What did the Government do? It looked at how much capacity it had. The biggest amount of capacity it had was in the cities. It started to build houses in the cities. What happened then? Supply and demand drove the prices through the roof. Five years ago, a house could be built between €100 and €110 per sq. ft. The same house today is €190 to €200 per sq. foot. The Government had a 13.5% tax five years ago on it. It has doubled its tax take. At the moment, anyone who going for a mortgage they pay tax to qualify for their mortgage. They pay tax where they are working. They pay tax on building their own house. It works out about 40% of their mortgage now is tax based. They are borrowing their mortgages for 20 and 30 years now to pay 40% more in tax and they might have to leave this country after it.

Sentiment score: -0.00