Leo Varadkar asked Mary Coughlan whether a draft document which was leaked to the Irish Times in relation to pay in the private sector was authentic. Coughlan espoused the superiority of the pen, when she came out with the following childish and ridiculous response:
Given that I have much more to be doing than reading The Irish Times, and for that matter from what I can see you spend 99.9% of your time on the internet, and on the computer. I haven’t time to be reading The Irish Times and what they have to say. All I can say is that I cannot and it is my responsibility not to, make any public pronouncement on the basis that we have to adjudicate within the Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment.
The second in command of our Government, has implied that using a computer and the internet is not productive. That it is a waste of time.
I would love to hear how you are attempting to bring and foster high tech companies in Ireland with such a stance Táiniste. Ireland boasts about the fact that Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Intel and HP are here (we used boast about Dell too), but productivity in those companies must be terrible as they use computers 100% of the time. Can they not get up from their desks and do some real work?
The question is, can we get a government who knows how to create a sustainable economy and reduce the level of unemployment?