"ACCOUNTABILITY ONE OF THE RED BUTTON ISSUES FOR AONTÚ IN UPCOMING GENERAL ELECTION "- Becky Kealy, Cork North West
The issue of holding Government to account for the ‘wanton waste and reckless spending of public money is one of the ‘red lines’ for Aontú and will be one of the topics up for discussion at an upcoming public meeting in Buttevant.
Becky Kealy, who will stand for the party in the Cork Northwest Constituency was speaking ahead of the first of several planned public meetings she is holding across the region.
She says she is holding as many meetings as possible to give the ‘voters the floor, to give them a chance to speak and articulate what action they want on issues and an opportunity to be ‘heard’, something she says, “is clearly not happening at the moment”.
According to Ms Kealy “the government is ignoring the voters, it has adopted a high-handed attitude and seems to take umbrage at the slightest criticism, valid as it may be and seems to think accountability is for the ‘little people’”.
“Accountability cuts across everything. No matter what circumstances people are in, nobody wants to believe that they have a government that is so incredibly cavalier with taxpayers’ money, spending it with absolute abandon, wasting it and getting away with it”.
“We are living in times when our country is ‘rolling in money’ but you wouldn’t think it with unfortunate children waiting in agony for long promised Scoliosis treatments, family carers run ragged without sufficient respite and supports, young people with Autism languishing for years on assessment waiting lists and the disgraceful homeless situation”.
“People are actually disgusted around the recent debacles surrounding the bike shelter and the security hut and these are just some of the disgraceful examples of runaway spending that we know about. What else is going to come down the line. It points to a far deeper systematic malaise at the heart of this, and successive governments.”
“The Children’s Hospital which we were told by Leo Varadkar, would be open in 2020” short of an asteroid hitting the planet” is now expected to open in 2026, years later and costing billions and nobody is being held to account over this. If that sort of debacle happened in the private sectors, people would be fired”.
“It is unconscionable how public money can be spent with such carelessness and a glaring injustice to the people of this country who work hard and do their best and who deserve a government that will respect their taxes”.
“The lack of accountability is astounding, and our government seems to have forgotten who pays its wages. An alien landing from outer space, listening to the Government trotting out the same old platitudes wouldn’t be fooled into thinking that they actually know what they’re doing, and we the public know they definitely don’t”.
“Everything from health to housing, to farming to fishing and to law and order is being hollowed out. There isn’t a single department that this Government presides over that is working as it should be”.
“I’m proud to have been chosen to stand again by Aontú, a party of principled, committed and hardworking people who are working tirelessly to highlight the huge problems that our country is experiencing”.
“I am urging as many people as possible to turn out for our meeting in the Muintir Na Tire Hall at 8pm on the 14th of October and have their say”.
