Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-12
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Ivana Bacik (LAB), Dublin Bay South

We are increasingly seeing the consequences of this Government's failure to support working people. Today, National Ambulance Service workers are on picket lines across the country. Our ambulance drivers and paramedics, who do such heroic front-line work, have been driven to strike over pay and conditions. Like so many, they are struggling to make ends meet on their current pay rates. As a result, the ambulance service cannot recruit or retain the staff it needs. Crews are being asked to provide increasingly complex care, under relentless pressure. This is unfair and, above all, unsafe.
Those involved have my solidarity and that of the Labour Party colleagues today. It is not just ambulance staff. Across communities, people are grappling to get by, instead of being able to get on because of the Government's policies. Just like in the eighties, a generation of young people is again facing a choice between adulthood in their childhood bedrooms or a new life overseas. Unlike the eighties, there is no shortage of jobs here. Instead, runaway costs and a poverty of Government ambition on housing and public services are driving them away. Tá siad ag dul thar lear ag lorg oibre. Tá siad ag dul ar imirce. Níl rogha acu ach imeacht thar sáile. That is having devastating effects. Last week in Glasnevin, I met a woman in tears who told me, in her words, that she was about to lose her second child to emigration. Her children, like so many others, are leaving Ireland because they see no future for themselves here and have no prospect of owning or having a home of their own. A former constituent who is now living in Perth told me that from his graduating medicine class of 350, 100 have joined him in Australia. That is an extraordinary figure. More extraordinarily, 60 of his classmates are working in the same hospital with him. He said the move has been made easier. although it is far away, because there are so many Irish people his own age there with him. He said that life is just so much easier there.
The fighting talk from the Minister, Deputy Chambers, this week is an admission that the Government is not spending wisely. We know, and Labour has said, that before the election, money was no object. The Government was rolling out gimmicks to buy people’s votes with their own money. Now, however, when communities need supports, it has deserted them while continuing to favour the burger barons and the big builders. When the Government's hare-brained VAT cut comes in on 1 July, working families will still be worse off. Who will not be worse off? McDonald's franchisees across the country stand to be €20 million better off. Supermac's, with revenues of nearly €300 million, will save €12 million due to the VAT cut. There is no evidence that this will be passed on to consumers.
The message the Government is sending to ordinary people is that they are on their own and the Government has made its choice. However, there is another choice. Last week, Labour put forward a mini-budget that would offer a substantial package for PAYE workers and struggling families. We are asking the Taoiseach if, tomorrow night when it comes to the vote on our mini-budget, he will support it. Will he support the targeted measures that will actually help households in this cost-of-living crisis?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-12/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-12