Piers Doherty

Actually, we're one of the lowest spending countries in Europe, in Western Europe, and actually the fourth lowest in Europe.

So there's a myth out there, and Shane talks about magic money tree trying to devalue the conversation.

But in fairness, there is probably a magic money tree in Fianna Fáil because when it comes to the bankers and the developers,

And the landlords, there's plenty of billions to be handed out to them.

But the reality is that we are, when we look at our comparators in terms of spend to the real economy, GNI Star, we are actually one of the lowest spending economies.

So let it rip.

No, it's not let it rip at all.

Stop letting it rip for vested interests.

Stop handing out quarters of a billion euro for developers to build apartments that are already under construction.

Stop allowing banks to do profits of three billion euro and pay less than 1%.

But actually start supporting families who can't pay their electricity bill.

Start making sure that more workers can keep money in their pockets.

Start making sure that childcare, for example, is affordable at a real cost of 10 euro a day instead of the type of nonsense that the government are coming out suggesting 800 euro per month.

And Shane mentioned unemployment figures and there's a slight uptick in relation to that.

And there is, and I think we need to have more assessment in relation to that.

Particularly, it's good to see that youth unemployment is actually dropping.

But what we are seeing in these figures is actually female unemployment is actually increasing.

And the level of female unemployment over the age of 25 has increased by 40% in the last year.

So that's a worry.

And I would actually, I'm not sure if it's true, but I would say that childcare is a major reason why that is happening, given the economy that we have at this point in time.