Our amendment proposes that the Government should get rid of the universal social charge, USC, for anybody who is earning less than €100,000 and replace it with a wealth tax on the very richest in our society. Others have made promises, most notably the Fine Gael-led Government when it introduced the USC, which was a grossly unfair act by a government-----

Excuse me. It was Fianna Fáil. The Deputy is absolutely right.

What Fine Gael did was say that it would get rid of the USC and then reneged-----

-----on the commitment to do so. People Before Profit has been very consistent in its view on the USC since entering this Dáil in 2011, which is that it was a grossly unfair austerity imposition on working people to pay for the crimes of the bankers and property developers who put this country over a cliff in 2008. Workers got it in the neck and were asked to pay for the crimes of others but it was supposed to be a temporary austerity measure. Workers were promised that it would go when the crisis had passed but th…

Well done, Deputy Shortall.

The Deputy might let, with the time, some of the other people here speak.

If he could; if he would not mind.

This is what happens when a Finance Bill is guillotined. We end up with a shambolic Committee Stage where there is no actual scrutiny of the Bill and everyone is forced to try to shoehorn in any points they want to make into the first grouping of amendments. That is what has happened today. People have no choice at this stage. There is very little time left. They want to raise issues and had there been proper scrutiny of the Bill, we would not have this. Certain people who spent a lot of time talking would not even…

I apologise, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

If the Government had not imposed a guillotine, we would not be in this mess.

Another day, another massacre by Israel in Gaza. In the latest attack, 17 people were killed in a school-turned-shelter in Nuseirat. Among those murdered are Mamdouh, 11 months old; a five-year old, Malak; a seven-year-old, Hamad; an eight-year-old, Mahmoud; Moatassem, nine years old; and many others. Clearly, Israel is not going to stop murdering, killing and massacring until it is stopped. We need sanctions and we need them urgently. Could the foreign affairs committee meet next week to do Committee Stage of the …

Could it be facilitated?

I thank Deputy Duncan Smith and his colleagues for this important motion. This debate is about whether we have safe and adequate staffing levels in our hospitals and health services, and whether the pay and numbers strategy is an embargo by another name to prevent the recruitment necessary to reach the safe and adequate staffing levels required to ensure patient safety and provide treatment for the patients who require it. We have a sort of mystery here. Fórsa referred to the mystery of the disappearing jobs in the…

I believe the Government is deceiving the public about what is actually happening in the health service. While it claims it is trying to recruit people to the health service to fill the staff shortages to address the ever-growing waiting lists, which have now reached nearly 1 million people in various hospitals, or the 10,000 children waiting for assessments of need, the 110,000 children waiting for therapies or the hundreds of people waiting for hours on trolleys in emergency departments, in actuality it is imposi…

It absolutely is. I was talking to radiation therapists who will be in here later today. They say that despite capital investment in, for example, linear accelerators and scanners in Cork, Galway and St. Luke's, the machines are sitting idle because they do not have enough staff, and that if people leave, there is no guarantee at all that they will be replaced and there is no effort to recruit the people who are necessary. In respect of my own hospital, I was informed, and I have to hand figures from the HSE that s…

I believe the health workers. I do not believe the Government. The workers are saying that they are stressed and overworked, that staffing levels are not safe, that patient safety is being endangered and that they are utterly demoralised. The Taoiseach should tell the truth about what is happening in the health service and scrap the pay and numbers strategy.

We are getting nearer to the truth now.

I have my facts from the HSE.

Of course the numbers are growing. Our population is growing and the need is growing. Baffling people with figures that are out of context does not tell the real truth. Waiting lists are not falling, according to the hospital consultants the Taoiseach mentioned. They are saying they are going to increase by 11% this year, so we will have 746,000 people waiting for outpatient appointments and just under 1 million waiting for hospital appointments. I suppose the Taoiseach thinks the waiting lists for assessments of n…

I got the figures from the Government. I got them from the Taoiseach's Minister for Health.