Joe Higgins

"If this conversion was genuine, we would have to go back 2,000 years to find another as rapid and as radical. Saul’s embrace of Christianity on the road to Damascus stood the test of time but the Taoiseach’s [Bertie Ahern] embrace of socialism on the banks of the Tolka hardly will."

"We want to see measures to implement taxation justice for ordinary working people. We want an end to the policy of many years now, of huge tax concessions for big corporations and a plethora of stealth taxes on ordinary families and ordinary working people."

"Superfluous and should be abolished."

"Does [the Minister] not find it extraordinary that the High Court is giving every benefit to a major corporation over the small people of Mayo? Is it not incredible that a full hearing of the issues of concern to the people of Mayo will be heard in the autumn, probably in October? In the meantime, the company is allowed to proceed and put everything in place with the like-minded reminder from the High Court that the pipes will have to be taken out again if the decision goes against Shell...Why is Shell so bullish and confident that it will get its pipeline come what may? Has it been secretly assured by the Minister, his predecessor, the Government or Fianna Fáil that it will get its gas in the way it wants regardless of the genuine fears and concerns of decent local people? Has the Government not fallen over itself on every occasion to facilitate this company?"

"This is a challenge to the entire trade union movement in Ireland - a declaration of war on the wages and working conditions of all workers."

"How nauseating in view of all this to see Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats, the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste, reduce this to a game of scrabble . . . to a matter of finding the right words. We now know that Fianna Fáil ministers see nothing wrong with a Minister for Finance taking large amounts of money for personal use from business interests as long as there is no proof that any specific favours were done."

"I only wanted to ask the Tanaiste if he now officially endorses cronyism and patronage in Irish politics."

"Like playing handball against a haystack."

"Babies also have a civil right not to be kissed by every passing politician."

"The overall agenda here is quite simply the ruling classes, or the classes of Europe intend to stride on to the world stage as a powerful economic entity. And they want to be as powerful as the US, meaning they want a stronger foreign policy and a military wing to back them up. But I can assure the Government that the debate will be a very intensive debate, a very vigorous debate and I think the benefit perhaps this time is that certain distractions that were raised the last time would be set aside, and therefore we can concentrate on the more fundamental issues. [...] Take for example this notion that Irish youth would be conscripted into an army. The only people I heard that from was Government ministers in the course of the campaign who said this is being said. Nobody here raised any such red herring. These were the so-called concerns that were being addressed. But the major concerns as to what the Treaty was really about has not been changed one iota."

"In view of the fact that the Royal Family of Britain is one of the wealthiest families in the world and this country is almost sleeping rough, so to speak, figuratively, would you ask the Queen if she might make a contribution towards her own bed and breakfast costs to assist the unfortunate taxpayers, and go easier on them?"

"Higgins: Is [assassination] only justified if the target is a reactionary, anti-democratic, anti-human rights obscurantist like bin Laden? Enda Kenny: I know you are a good Christian man who has your job to do in here from a political point of view. Many of his victims in the twin towers in New York were of Irish descent or directly Irish."

"It is outrageous that [the ESB] is oppressing a powerless citizen in this way."

"A banker's charter written by bankers."

"It is like sending a bunch of marauding foxes that had raided a henhouse back to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to their previous victims."

"Delusional on a Marie Antoinette scale."