Niall Collins (Limerick, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Moreover, it is centralising and warehousing all these services into the larger towns and cities. As Minister for Justice and Equality, the Minister has a primary function to protect the public but it does not feel protected by him. The public has lost confidence in the Minister and Fianna Fáil is taking the opportunity in this motion to articulate that loss of confidence on behalf of communities and the public. It ill-behoves anyone to come into this Chamber to question Fianna Fáil's legitimacy or its mandate to table that motion. Much comment has been made in respect of the stakeholders, to the Judiciary and to the Garda representative associations. In addition, Members spoke last night on the recent controversies regarding the RTE "Prime Time" debate and the Pembroke Street incident, to which I will return.

The Minister's contribution last night, when one studies the detail of what he said, was an amazing statement. However, prior to that when, in the aftermath of the RTE "Prime Time" programme, the Minister was queried and received some hostile comment from my party and others, his initial reaction was to treat it as a joke. It was to ask how dare anyone do that. It was to question whether any criticism of Alan Shatter was legitimate or was a joke and he tried to wave it away. In his statement last night, he stated "This is far removed from the sort of political circus we have seen over the past two weeks". Who but the Minister is generating the circus? He is the man at the centre of the circus and I will not tell him what people at the centre of the circus usually are, because I will not get into that and will not personalise this matter. Thereafter, having finished claiming it was a joke and a circus, the Minister then decided to blame the media. It was the media's fault and he sought to rubbish the Irish Independent with its authoritative version of events. As for the other newspapers, neither I nor Fianna Fáil wrote the editorials. If the Minister simply wishes to rubbish all the media and their commentary, that is fine.

If one turns to the remainder of the Minister's statement last night, one learns of the Minister, Deputy Shatter, the reformer. This is supposed to give the Minister a free pass from everything else. While it does not come as a surprise to me, it will come as a surprise to many of his colleagues, that most of the Bills that have been passed under his stewardship were already there when he walked in to the Department of Justice and Equality.

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