Ged Nash
Louth · Labour Party · Ireland
“However, it is a rich country that has a problem understanding that it is now sustainably rich. Those of us in opposition will, of course, say that this country needs to do better, and it can.”
“On the one hand, it is legitimate for an Opposition party to critique the economic model day in, day out. I do it myself all of the time, and we all know that Ireland can do better. However, at the same time, is that kind of critique helping to persuade those whom we need to persuade into a new Ireland? I am not so sure that it is.”
“There will be fiscal and financial implications for this State in that transition. There is an obligation on us, insofar as we can, to properly interrogate and consider those implications and to be upfront about them.”
“No, it did not, but let us not exaggerate its impact on the Irish economy. It is good and it had an impact, but was there a causal relationship? I am not so sure. The jury is out on that. However, is the Good Friday Agreement a good thing and good for our economy? Of course, it is. Did the guns fall silent in the North?”
“We are not good at describing what those accommodations will be or what that relationship with the UK will be, whether economically, socially, politically, culturally or otherwise. It is a relationship that will have to be maintained. It will look very different as we approach a new Ireland.”
“That was a very different prospect when the vast majority, if not all, of East German citizens wanted to become part of a united German polity. As we know, that is not the case on this island. We need to be careful about how we approach that.”
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“Will the Minister of State update the House, if he has the information available, on whether that scheme, as I have requested for many years, will be put on a statutory footing? These are no longer one-in-100-year events. Unfortunately, they are problems associated with the reality of climate change, an issue that is very much here now. I would appreciate if the Minister of State could address some of those questions in his concluding remarks.”
“I recall engaging with the then Minister for enterprise, Deputy Coveney, back in 2023 regarding a flooding event on the Cooley Peninsula that adversely affected villages like Carlingford and elsewhere. I recall being rather concerned that, when events like this occurred, a memorandum was required for every event to be brought to Government to provide a discrete support scheme for businesses affected by flooding. This is not strictly speaking within Deputy Moran's remit as Minister of State with responsibility for the OPW, but he will engage with the Minister for enterprise on such matters. Often, businesses find it challenging to obtain the insurance cover they need.”
“We need to be prepared for that and have our adaptation and mitigation initiatives ready. There is work under way on the Cooley Peninsula and Louth County Council has engaged a geospatial contractor to carry out topographical area surveys as part of the Carlingford and Greenore flood relief scheme. Data gathering will play a crucial role in flood modelling and could help shape the future of flood protection measures for the area. It is good, of course, to see this kind of modern technology being utilised in the development of these projects. I wish to raise with the Minister of State the issue around financial support for businesses and communities when these flood events take place.”
“The Minister of State will be aware that there are similar schemes under way in Dundalk, Blackrock south and Ardee in county Louth, which have had a year's head start on the Baltray and Drogheda project, but they too appear to be progressing at the same rather sluggish pace. He will be familiar with some of the issues residents on the Cooley Peninsula in Louth have experienced over the past few years with serious flood events. I note in the Minister of State's remarks - he went on to clarify them somewhat in the context of the climate challenge we are facing - that many of the projects we are dealing with now and the OPW is rolling out are designed to address what might be termed one-in-100 year events. Climate change is a reality and these are no longer one-in-100-year events.”
“Deputy Farrell mentioned earlier, and we both raised with the Minister for public expenditure in Priority Questions today, the initiative he was taking in the development of the infrastructure division and the task force in his Department, recognising as he said in recent days that the infrastructure delivery system was in a state of paralysis and simply not delivering. Will the Minister of State, in his closing remarks, intimate to colleagues in the Chamber what the position is regarding OPW's relationship with that new division in the Department and with the task force? Will flood relief programmes and the expedited flood relief programmes form a part of that?”
“At the same time, RPS is modelling to provide an accurate representation of the flooding mechanisms within the study area and all of this is happening before we even get to a cost-benefit analysis of the project. The depressing news for locals anxious that the project progress and be completed is that the current projected date for the scheme to be fully operational is 2033. That is probably optimistic, given the fact that we are only at stage 1 at this point and we know that can take 48 months. Why does it take so long to get through this particular part of the process? In the case of the overall project, it is probably a 12-year timeframe at a minimum.”
“I am not an expert on flood relief programmes, but I imagine that some of the delays and concerns have to do with the fact that we are dealing with a special area of conservation on the Boyne Estuary, a very important habitat for protected species, some of which spend their summers here, such as little terns. The little terns conservation project protects some very important birds there. The steering group continues to collect data, but there are a bewildering number of surveys taking place, from aquatic ecology walk-over surveys to geophysical surveys and overwintering bird surveys. Notwithstanding what I said, that is of course important.”
“Louth County Council, the Office of Public Works and RPS Consulting Engineers Limited are working on the project and I congratulate them on their communications initiative regarding it. They provide regular newsletters on a dedicated website informing the public of progress. However, the trouble is that progress and where we are at the moment. The latest newsletter was published in April and reported that the project was still at stage 1, which has created some frustration. The newsletter went on to explain that stage 1 involved the identification and development of a preferred scheme. The steering group driving the project continues to collect data, we are told, to ensure that accurate and up-to-date information is used to inform the development of the project.”
“I am sharing time with my colleague, Deputy Ahern. We will divide our time into seven and three minutes. I will focus my comments principally on the Drogheda and Baltray flood relief scheme, which was announced in 2021. Four years later, the latest newsletter proclaims it is still at stage 1 of five stages. The Minister of State set out quite clearly that, on average, the process involved five separate stages. It appears that this particular process is still at stage 1, which is scheme development and preliminary design. The Minister of State said that, on average, it took 48 months to carry out. We always use examples from our own constituencies to illustrate wider points on national policy questions and concerns about delivery, and I am doing that in this case.”
“Will the Minister put on the record of the House an example of a project that has been delayed in recent years, and that has frustrated all of us, which he thinks would not have been delayed in the way it was if a division like this and the task force he referred to earlier had been in place? What particular project is his priority over the next few years? He said the acid test will be deliverables. What is he going to deliver? Will he name a project?”
“Will the Minister consider finding a way to include people with international experience from outside this jurisdiction in the division? I do not know the identities of the people involved and, in some ways, it is none of my business. I wish them well, because if they do a good job our country succeeds, so we should give this initiative a fair wind. However, a lot of the people involved in the infrastructure division and task force will themselves have considerable experience with delayed projects. I am not apportioning blame here, but they may have been responsible in their own positions for projects we would associate with significant delays.”
“Will he also confirm what countries he has looked at for best practice on delivering key infrastructure projects when considering setting up this Department? Are there examples we can look to for inspiration?”
“That is not an insignificant number of staff. Can the Minister confirm that those from State agencies who will be working in the division will continue to be paid by their parent agencies? I assume that will be the case. The Minister was quoted in T he Irish Times yesterday as saying that the acid test will be delivery. I assume the action plan on infrastructure delivery the Minister referred to will be published side by side with the review of the national development plan in July. That would make a lot of sense. In that action plan and the national development plan, will he commit to ensuring there are deadlines and milestones around key projects? That will be the way in which he and his Government colleagues will be held to account on actual delivery.”
“Will the Minister elaborate on the staffing composition of the new infrastructure division within his Department and on what he views as the key responsibilities and deliverables for the division in 2025? This is a key objective of the Minister and is contained in the programme for Government. Will he inform the House as to what the priorities are for the rest of this year?”
“This tells us that we in Ireland have called it right. Labour and the other cosignatories of this motion are calling it right again. The Tánaiste must call it right too. Let us move beyond the device of not opposing the motion to avoid a damaging vote for the Government, to implementing the motion's demands. Starving Gazan children cannot eat well-meaning statements. Let our Government build alliances and challenge the UN to assert itself again, to find its moral authority and courage again, to act to end the war, to allow for aid through the UN and to form a peacekeeping force to protect the people of Gaza and set the ground for a lasting peace and a just resolution.”
“Ireland has agency. We have power. We have shown this in the recent past. Along with other smaller states, we recognised the State of Palestine. This was dismissed at the time by some as tokenism. It will matter in the end. Political figures in France, the UK and elsewhere are now giving that idea some considerable thought. We moved in this Parliament to try to ban goods and services from the occupied territories. We were dismissed then as being unrealistic, accused again of a form of tokenism. I predict that such measures will now go mainstream and in larger, more influential countries. We said years ago that we should suspend or at least review the EU's association agreement with Israel. This is now, tens of thousands of massacred Palestinians later, the express official view of the majority of EU member states.”
“By implementing rather than merely not opposing this motion, Government has the chance to save countless lives and to kick-start a process where the UN and the discredited international community can finally reassert and find again their collective courage. It is about time the world, not a kleptocratic US Administration, took on responsibility for Gaza and Palestine, morally and in practice. The US has no moral authority whatsoever. It is drained from it. Let us, the rest of the world, mind the scene of what is left of ours. Nobody, not even the Israeli regime's grimmest and keenest supporters, can claim they do not know what is happening and what Netanyahu plans for the destruction and ethnic cleansing of Gaza. There is a step change in the approach of the UK, France, Canada and even Germany in recent days. A narrow window is opening.”
“Where one stands on the genocide in Gaza is the moral question of our time. For the vast majority of us, the only action we can take is to attend a protest, write to our TD or boycott goods and services. However, there are 174 of us in here who have greater agency, 15 of us who have an extra special responsibility, the Tánaiste included. Members of Government must show the moral leadership cruelly absent across the world, with some notable exceptions, a cowardice that has allowed tens of thousands of children to be murdered and starved to death because of where they were born, where they happened to live.”
“We can no longer stand by and watch this genocide unfold. We need to act now, do everything we can and use every lever at our disposal to stop it.”
“That one measure is to stop the Central Bank of Ireland from creating the ground for or facilitating the sale of Israel's war bonds in the EU. Not to act on this now will make the State complicit. We have consistently called out and condemned Israel. It is now time to put those statements into action. We cannot speak out of both sides of our mouth. Our words have to be backed up by action. The time for talking is long past. It is time to act. Our actions are being watched. We in this country can send out a signal through a range of measures such as the enactment of the occupied territories Bill as it was originally intended. If implemented, those kinds of actions would be seen by the whole world. These are pioneering initiatives Ireland could take to end this genocide and to create a just and lasting peace in Palestine.”
“Others have been prevented from offering assistance to those in need, from going to work or even from entering Gaza. Civilians have been abducted from hospitals even as they lay on the operating table. Who among us, in this Chamber or elsewhere, will ever forget the despair on the face of Dr. Alaa al-Najjar as she received the dead bodies of nine of her ten children as she did her job as a doctor at the Nasser Medical Complex towards the end of last week? All of this is to say nothing of the more than 50,000 people who have been killed in this conflict and the tens of thousands more who are currently at risk of starving to death as the Israeli regime denies them international aid. One of the actions that courageous group of health workers called for was precisely what is called for in the approach this Bill is taking.”
“The group spoke of how no aspect of healthcare has been left untouched by the Israeli and they outlined what the Irish Government could do to help end the suffering. They told us there is no longer a single fully functioning hospital in Gaza. All have been damaged and many have been totally destroyed. While the killing of the 14 healthcare and unarmed civil defence workers quite rightly hit the headlines in March of this year, this horrendous event represents just 1% of the healthcare workers killed by Israel since October 2023. Between 1,000 and 1,400 healthcare workers have been killed by Israel. This includes some who were tortured to death. Hundreds of others have been abducted by the Israel Defense Forces. Surgeons have been assaulted and taken away in the middle of operations.”
“Nobody in their right mind can argue that an EU regulation could force any institution in the State to be complicit in genocide and the Government must act to make sure the Central Bank is no longer in that kind of position. Along with the passing of the occupied territories Bill, the measures proposed in this Bill and the motion my party will bring to the Dáil tomorrow will put Ireland's money where its mouth is in defence of the Palestinian people and in defence of humanity, of multilateralism and of justice. The Minister has a strong firm moral compass and I ask him to assess the approaches that Opposition parties are seeking to take through that lens. Recently, my Labour Party colleague, Senator Nessa Cosgrove, hosted a group of Irish healthcare workers who volunteer in Gaza.”
“Ms Mahony stated: The thing about this EU Prospectus Regulation is that it’s designed to set out technical standards that a prospectus has to reach. But implicit in that is that the prospectus is for at least lawful reasons. ... no EU regulation is designed to legitimise genocide or to legitimise criminal intent. Ms Mahony went on to say: It makes no sense to say that an EU regulation is forcing somebody to become complicit in genocide. No organisation, neither a business nor a bank nor an educational institution, for that matter, or any institution is not bound by the Genocide Convention and not bound by international humanitarian law. Of course, Ms Mahony is correct.”
“In recent weeks, there have been protests at the Central Bank of Ireland calling for action and regardless of what side of the House or political spectrum we are on, we all have a moral responsibility to do all we can. I am aware that the Central Bank position is that it can only refuse to approve these bonds where it has the legal basis to do so, such as sanctions, for example, being introduced against Israel at an EU level or where there are national restrictive measures to the same effect but the Government will be aware that this is a contested space and that this is disputed by many. Helen Mahony, co-ordinator of Stop Funding Genocide, the campaign that is being run by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, told The Journal recently that she believes the Central Bank is wrong in its interpretation of its obligations.”
“The CEO of Israel Bonds, the organisation that sells these bonds, Dani Naveh, has spoken in the media about how money generated from the sale of Israeli bonds has been used to fund military operations in Gaza. The unique position of our Central Bank in this chain gives the Irish State significant leverage, it if chooses to use it, in starving the Israeli military of funding and if we do not pull this lever, then our fine words calling for peace and an end to genocide are just words. Pressure has been mounting on the Government at a number of levels to introduce legislation that would effectively stop Ireland facilitating - I use that word "facilitating" deliberately - the sale of Israeli bonds across the EU, and rightly so. I note the Minister's assessment of the Bill and its contents earlier on.”
“To be sold in the EU, bonds from non-EU countries must have their bond prospectus a legal document setting out details of the bond, approved by the central bank of a country that is in the EU. Before Brexit, the UK carried out this work for Israel. After they left the EU, Israel chose Ireland to be its "home country" for this purpose, meaning the Irish Central Bank is responsible for approving its bond prospectus. That puts our Central Bank, our financial services regulator, in the uncomfortable and, frankly, unacceptable position, in my view, of facilitating the sale of bonds that are funding Israel's relentless and brutal assault on the Palestinian people. These bonds have become known, as we know, as war bonds and Israel is making no attempt to hide the fact that these bonds or securities are funding directly the onslaught on Gaza.”
“Given the state of relations between Ireland and Israel at this moment in time are at an all-time low and for very good reason, it is a rather perverse irony that Ireland is regarded as Israel's home country for the purpose of facilitating the sale of its war bonds in the EU. I note the Minister's assessment of the Bill but the truth remains. We are a cog in this wheel. Israel's bonds - the Minister is correct - are not listed for sale on the Irish Stock Exchange. That is true but is only half the story. Owing to a odd twist of fate, Ireland is at the heart of the sale of these blood-stained bonds in the EU in another perverse outworking of Brexit. Whatever way we look at it or splice and dice it, the Irish Central Bank has a special role in facilitating their sale in the EU.”
“We know the lower paid have a propensity to spend more of their income in the local community, ensuring that demand continues even if the local economy is in some difficulty. The Minister needs to review his position on the living wage and other employment rights he is attempting to decimate on the sham altar of competitiveness. The essence of social democracy is having decent jobs, a decent economy and good, functioning businesses that offer decent working conditions to people. Unfortunately, the Minister is showing that he is picking sides, and this is unnecessary.”
“The Minister also failed to understand and accept that there has always been churn in the retail and hospitality sectors. There were enormous net job gains in the retail and hospitality sectors in recent years, sectors which, quite rightly, were protected during the pandemic but which have continued to be protected with significant subsidies that have no conditions whatsoever attached to them in terms of job quality, retention or pay. What the Minister is doing in respect of the living wage is virtue signalling. That is it. It has no basis whatsoever in evidence. This will affect the lowest paid people in our society. The reality is that decent pay boosts productivity and increases retention for SMEs.”
“These jobs are not to be found in the globally traded international sector; they are in the locally traded sectors - those areas that are not in the front line of Trump's potential tariffs. If the Government wants to address competitiveness, it should look at energy, housing and infrastructure, and not the national minimum wage. As the Minister will know, and I am sure this was the case, section 6 of the 2015 minimum wage Act, which allowed for the Low Pay Commission to be formed, makes it very clear that no decision should be taken that would impact employment rates and competitiveness.”
“Speaking earlier on the radio, the Minister said he makes decisions based on evidence. There is no evidence anywhere in the world to suggest that modest incremental increases to rates of national minimum wages impact employment rates or competitiveness. The Minister talks a lot about competitiveness but by delaying the introduction of the living wage, he is owning up to the problems the Government has created. If it wanted to deal with competitiveness, it would deal with the cost of energy, deal with renewables and deal with the genuine cost of doing business in Ireland which has nothing to do with the rate of the national minimum wage. Deputy Conway-Walsh was absolutely right.”
“I hope the House will join me in wishing all working people across the country a happy May Day. However, delaying the living wage is no way to mark International Workers' Day. It has been 25 years since the minimum wage was introduced and ten years since the Low Pay Commission, which I established, made its first annual recommendation on an appropriate rate for the national minimum wage. This is a really important legacy to protect the interests of low-paid people. The Minister is now publicly instructing the Low Pay Commission, a statutory independent expert body which supposed to be independent of Government, to dump living wage pledge on the pretence of protecting competitiveness. Will the Minister allow the Low Pay Commission to do its job?”
“A large school in my area with just one SNA has been trying to get a second post sanctioned for the past four to five years with no success. I do not want the Minister to tell me that this school, which is one of the largest schools in the country, does not have additional needs and can manage with one SNA. It is disgraceful. The system as it is currently constituted is failing our children and has to be fixed.”
“That teacher made the very valid point that it is not only children with additional needs who are impacted when a school has an inadequate number of SNAs. It affects every child in the school because human resources are stretched to cover the gaps. The Minister will be familiar with Marymount National School in Ballsgrove, Drogheda. It is in a DEIS area and has additional needs. The State recognises that it is an area of disadvantage and has additional needs. The teacher told me that, when a child with additional needs did not have his or her needs met, it could lead to frustration, anger, meltdowns and violence. How can an adult looking after 20 plus children keep them safe while helping a child in distress? A separate but linked issue is that of how the NCSE and the SENO system is operating on the ground.”
“The money must chase the need, not the other way around. This is the equivalent of saying that the emergency department in our local hospital is full, so people will not be allowed to access it and can go home. This is a demand-led service and it needs to be treated as such. The motion calls on the Minister and her Department to lift the arbitrary cap on SNAs and ensure that SNA positions are funded, sanctioned and approved when the NCSE has recommended that posts are required. As the school principal rightly said, children with additional needs do not disappear because the quota has been reached. A teacher at the same school asked me whether our children suddenly stopped having additional needs and were they not worth the same as their peers in other schools?”
“She went on to explain that, despite a thorough review and a clear recommendation from the SENO that the school's SNA allocation be increased, the school was informed that the post would not be sanctioned. The intimation is that a national limit has been reached. The school principal described the situation as completely unacceptable, and I completely agree. The principal asked that I back her call for an immediate review of this quota or recruitment cap and demand that this school and others in the same position I am dealing with have their recommended allocations of SNAs sanctioned. That is what I am calling on the Minister to do. The budget considerations are determining the allocation of SNAs, not the professionally assessed need. Otherwise the assessment of need of those needs is futile.”
“What we will get from the Minister in a few minutes is a list of numbers detailing the investment in the sector and the additional SNAs that have been recruited in recent years. That is all well and good, but it is clear from schools in my constituency and around the country that it is not enough and that the system is broken. My office has been deluged in recent weeks with contacts from students, staff and families at Marymount National School in Drogheda, in particular. The exasperated principal of that school wrote to me a number of weeks ago saying that students with additional needs in the school had once again been failed by a system that claimed to prioritise inclusion and support.”
“I will focus my comments on the recruitment and allocation of SNAs. I recently submitted a parliamentary question on behalf of a local school in my hometown of Drogheda. Despite a clear recommendation from the local special educational needs organiser, SENO, to increase its SNA allocation, new posts were denied. That is because of some invisible and arbitrary national cap, an effective recruitment ban that is not a recruitment ban. This is Orwellian stuff, quite frankly. The answer I received from the Minister was certainly long and detailed. It went on at length about the wonderful things the Department was doing in this area but it failed to address the school's situation. It did not admit that there was a national cap on the recruitment of SNAs at all.”
“This is not a time to be driving down the pay and benefits of working people. At a time when the indigenous Irish economy will require support and when demand in local economies is important, we need to be providing support by ensuring that those who are earning the least are supported by us as best we can. In the short term, we require a short-term work scheme and a marketing fund for the worst-affected sectors, such as dairy and whiskey. They are out of the firing line at the moment but that may change. We also need a credit guarantee scheme to support affected businesses. We support the motion.”
“The Government started this process yesterday when it not only delayed the extension of additional sick pay benefits for Irish workers, but stopped it entirely. Let us not misrepresent this. A commitment was made in various election manifestoes and in the programme for Government to ensure we move towards European norms on sick pay for Irish workers. They are being stopped and next in the firing line will be the national minimum wage. That is what is going to happen. Fianna Fáil has form on this. During the last economic crisis, the first thing the party did was destroy the national minimum wage by reducing it by one hour. There was no economic evidence whatsoever, anywhere in the world, to suggest that this would retain or add a single job and it did not. In my mind, Fianna Fáil will forever be associated with that.”
“That is on the Minister of State and his colleagues. It is as simple as that. President Trump is trying to turn the clock back to a golden age that only exists in his own imagination. This is a massive act, in my view, of self-harm against his own people and we are being caught in the crossfire. While it is a time for calm nerves and cool heads, that does not suggest it is a time for inaction or inertia, nor a time for Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and their colleagues on the so-called Independent benches to decide to take their concerns out on ordinary working people in Ireland. The view always among some Deputies on the Government benches is that we should not waste the opportunity of a good crisis to drive down the pay of working people and their working terms and conditions.”
“I listened to the Taoiseach last week on “Morning Ireland” after I was on that programme myself. He talked about how we all need to do these things. When did this suddenly dawn on the Taoiseach that these are problems for Irish society and our competitiveness? We in the Labour Party have been saying this for years. During the recent election campaign, I said publicly on whatever platform I was provided with that the biggest threat to the Irish foreign direct investment model at that point in time before the election of Donald Trump was the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil government and its re-election. That is a reality. We have not delivered on the infrastructural requirements we need and our society, jobs and businesses are paying the price. We are not prepared to enter into this tumultuous period for our economy.”
“We all know the reasons that CETA, for example, has been held up. Those issues need to be addressed. We know there are concerns principally in the Minister of State’s own party, Fine Gael, in Fianna Fáil and on the Independent benches about the prospect for certain sectors of the Irish farming community in the context of Mercosur. These are issues the Minister of State will be aware of and issues on which, if we are serious about trade, we need to have an open and frank discussion in this House to address those concerns head on. If we are to improve our competitiveness, as colleagues said earlier in their comments, we have to address the infrastructural deficits we have, develop our new energy resources with offshore wind, improve our water infrastructure and scale up housing provision and transport investment.”
“I will say one thing that is intrinsic to any scheme the Government may be considering. I notice the Tánaiste has changed his tune somewhat from comments he made last weekend. He seems more open to be persuaded of the merits of a scheme. There should be no subsidies from the State without conditionality. Those kinds of conditions should include a commitment to retain jobs. A good example where a short-term scheme would have made a difference in the last recession is in the construction sector. If we had been able to hold on to more of our skilled construction workers during and after the crash, we would be in a much better position now with the housing crisis. We will also have to look at how we grow our trade connections with the rest of the world and how we develop new global markets.”
“This is the kind of scheme that, for example, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions called for during Brexit. IBEC, as I said, is calling for it now. For years now, it is something the Labour Party has been consistently calling for. In fact, this concept should form a feature of Ireland’s labour market model - full stop - to deal with turbulence and shocks as they arise in a time-limited and targeted fashion. It would support companies impacted by tariffs to hold onto skilled workers as they adapt to changing circumstances and are allowed to be assisted by Enterprise Ireland, for example, to develop new markets. It also protects workers from redundancy with State subsidies and shorter working hours when companies encounter difficulties outside of their control.”
“The scheme the Labour Party is proposing is built on the principles of the German Kurzarbeit model, which keeps workers close to their employers during periods of uncertainty or turbulence. It would not be paid from common spending but from the Social Insurance Fund and the National Training Fund, both of which the Minister of State will know are in substantial surplus. This is the kind of scheme that prevented workers in Germany from experiencing mass redundancies during the last great recession and ensured hard-won skills were retained in the German economic model. The social and economic cost of job and skills displacement is enormous. There is ongoing and continuous scarring for individuals, communities, families, economies and firms in this regard. We cannot run that risk in the context of what we are about to face.”
“To that end, the Labour Party and I have been calling for the introduction of a temporary short-term work scheme, an anchor initiative, that will keep workers tied to their employer, avoid redundancies and prevent companies from shutting their doors. The Labour Party and IBEC are on the exact same page in this regard. We are ad idem . However, it seems the Government has, in a rather kneejerk fashion, set its face against it. I suspect this is the case because it raises the spectre of the employment wage subsidy scheme. What we are proposing is very different, however. In my view, that scheme has been deliberately misrepresented by some Government figures in recent times to scare the horses with regard to the scale of resources that needed to be deployed for the wage subsidy scheme with which we are all most recently familiar.”
“We must remember that this is not about economics, nor is it necessarily about business and trade for President Trump. This is a political project. That is what it is about. It is an ultra-nationalist political project first and foremost. It may well look like, at some point soon, he will be presiding over the ashes of a destroyed US economy and all that entails for the world economy. Companies the length and breadth of this island which trade into the United States will be facing similar news this week to the news received by that Louth-based company late last week. In the weeks to come, the Government must move to put in place supports that companies like that firm in Louth and hundreds - possibly thousands - of others will need over the next period of time to help us to ride out what we hope will be a short- to medium-term storm.”
“Trump’s trade tantrum is having a real world impact, just one week after that bizarre event in the White House Rose Garden where an American President held up what looked like a bookmaker’s betting board as he gambled away the world economy in service of his own ego. It is quite bizarre that the country that has done the most to design the current global world economic order is now set on destroying it. The country that has benefited the most from it is upending that very order itself. It would be comical if it was not so serious. The real world ripples of President Trump’s decisions have already hit our shores at the weekend. The first email I received on Saturday morning was from a Louth-based firm which, last Friday, lost all of its US orders, which that business and its workforce very much depend on.”