Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I might not use all of my time because most of the questions I wanted to pose have already been asked. I welcome all of our guests, thank them for their attendance and sympathise with them, although sympathy and empathy is not much good to them. I am as frustrated as they are. I am meeting people from all over the country and I know that there will be skills shortages in the future. One cannot blame people for moving into truck driving or other areas with more job security. Having to let staff go three times is just shocking.

I would be very critical of the Government because we have not had any certainty. There are mixed messages all over the place. There was even a court case this morning relating to public worship. The Government had to withdraw to try to determine if there is legislation in place to ban public worship. The Chairman is aware of what happened with regard to a priest in Cavan. I am flattened by the inertia and the lack of coherence and cohesion. I read reports in the Sunday newspapers suggesting that even Cabinet members were not being kept in the loop. The Rural Independent Group, as members of the Opposition, used to be briefed every fortnight by the Taoiseach. That happened up until November but we have not had a briefing since 15 November. The witnesses want answers from us for their sector but we do not have answers for them which is an abject failure of the democratic process. I will be making my views known on that. I salute the ingenuity of the sector and thank the witnesses for the figures they have provided. I am bordering on depressed because of the lack of coherence. The North is opening up, as is England, but we have no roadmap. We have nothing to offer the witnesses. I thank them for coming in but I do not even expect them to respond to me. It is a sad situation that there has been such a dearth of democratic response.