A statement from Tommy Tiernan in response to Simon Coveney TD – Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister for Defence

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  1. **Context:** *Tiernan said on his podcast that in the Programme for Government, “Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael said we will deliver on 0.7% and they haven’t”, adding they are only giving 0.37%.*

    *“This doesn’t have to be this way,” said Tiernan, who called on people to make their voices heard ahead of next week’s Budget.*

    *People are rightly speaking out about the cost-of-living crisis, said Tiernan, but he said people living in the Horn of Africa have “an edge of death crisis”.*

    **When Tiernan’s comments were put to Coveney by The Journal in New York, where Coveney is attending a number of key UN events, he said:**

    *“In terms of international hunger, malnutrition, the kind of things that Tommy Tiernan and others have rightly been talking about, just to say this week alone, Ireland will be announcing significant increases in funding to two very important initiatives,” he said.*

    *“I hear the point in relation to 0.7%. All I can say is that since I took over the privilege of being Minister of Foreign Affairs, we have seen hundreds of millions of Euros extra spent on overseas aid. By the middle of next week, when the budget is announced, we’ll see another big increase next week.*

    *“Ireland will have effectively moved from spending about €700 million euros to spending about €1.2 billion euros a year on overseas development aid,” he* added.

  2. In the next breath he’ll be complaining about the artists payment, the state of healthcare/housing/anything else. The fact is that there’s never enough money to go around and all that happens is Departments try get the biggest slice they can. The govt effectively have to cut spending on one side to increase spending on another, or increase tax take.

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