“What on earth did we fight for our freedom for? To live in a kip like this?”
The Tonight Show on TV3 with Matt Cooper and Ivan Yates is only a couple of days old, but it delivered one of the most compelling TV moments of the year so far on Tuesday night.
Eamon Dunphy was amongst the guests in studio with Matt and Ivan on Tuesday and launched into a passionate tirade about the state of Ireland right now, hitting out at our national debt, the housing crisis and hospital waiting lists amongst other items in an impassioned speech.
“I’m not optimistic about this country,” Dunphy said and when Ivan Yates interjected to herald Leo Varadkar as “an energetic young leader”, Dunphy outlined some specific reasons to explain his lack of optimism.
“It’s not the people of this country, the people of this country are amazing in their mood, how they deal with these things, at how little racism we have and all of the things that afflict the countries in bad times,” Dunphy said.
“But we do need to recognise that the crash will never end for our grandchildren, this €200 billion – and you know Matt, you’re economically literate – €200 billion of debt that we are carrying and we pay the promissory note of €6.7 billion the other day.
“We must address the justice or injustices of the European establishment towards us as a society.”
When Matt Cooper asked Dunphy how we might go about doing that, Dunphy responded: “I think, by declaring a state of emergency, by admitting that a country that trains nurses can’t keep them, that a country that has, tonight, in bed and breakfast accommodation, children who have to get up around six o’clock tomorrow morning, get a bus for an hour, go to school, walk the streets, come back to the bed and breakfast.
“If that’s not an emergency, a national emergency, the trolleys, people, 590,000 people on waiting lists, for a hospital?
“What on earth did we fight for our freedom for? To live in a kip like this?”
You can see Dunphy’s commentary in full below.
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