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Sasko Lazarov via Photocall Ireland
# Question Time
Joan Burton told: 'The country wants Enda's head on a plate and you can deliver it'
Mick Wallace said people are sick with ‘cronyism in Irish politics’.
INDEPENDENT TD MICK Wallace told the Tánaiste that people voted for change in 2011 but didn’t get it.
During an exchange during Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil this afternoon, the Wexford deputy said the public’s trust of Fine Gael was now in tatters and asked Joan Burton to “pull the plug on this coalition government.”
The Tánaiste defended the government saying that unemployment is at the lowest it has been in five and a half years.
“There’s a significant fall the number of people unemployed and a huge rise in the number of people back at work.
“I agree the country has a long way to go, there are still 80,000 people formerly in construction who are on the live register. We want to build homes for the people who need homes.
Wallace described the jobs as “a race to the bottom in social protection.
The jobs are minimum wage and have no contract. It surprises me that you’re okay with that.
“We’ve put interests of big businesses before the people. People are sick to the back teeth of the cronyism.
The people of the country want Enda’s head on a plate and you can deliver it.
However Burton continued to defend the coalition saying that, “The country has progressed very significantly in terms of the banking debt we inherited.”
McNulty
Switching topic, Sinn Féin Deputy Leader Mary Lou McDonald described Enda Kenny’s explanation of the McNulty affair as “waffle” adding that his answers have been “as clear as mud”.
To the public in general looking on the Taoiseach’s fingerprints are all over this appointment.
Burton replied, saying that the Taoiseach has explained himself on several occasions.
“You’re speaking about silence and evasion and refusing to answer questions. ”Your moral tone of outrage when you have nothing to say on the body of a man being found in a bog in Meath today shows you have two different sets of moral codes.”
The Tánaiste added nothing new to the McNulty controversy.
When questioned on the subject by Fianna Fáil TD Robert Troy – she said that at a meeting with the Taoiseach on Monday she proposed a memo for government in relation to appointments for state boards.
“In terms of state boards, if you look at the volume of public business and turnover … it is important they come from business backgrounds, HR backgrounds, public service and that they don’t all come from D4 but all around Ireland.”
Read: Enda: I can’t name the Fine Gael official because they’d be pilloried>
