Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

The resignation of the Minister for Justice and Equality is an outright condemnation of the top leadership of the Fine Gael-Labour Party coalition Government. The Taoiseach; his deputy, the Tánaiste, Deputy Eamonn Gilmore, and the most senior Ministers stuck to the former Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Alan Shatter, like limpets when it was already obvious that he was careering around the place like an out of control Formula 1 driver on speed, isolated in his racing bubble and crashing recklessly through barrier after barrier, leaving many people crumpled on the road behind him. Garda whistleblowers, victims of Garda malpractice and even the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission were trodden on with a contempt that was the epitome of everything that was opposite to justice. However, without exception, the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, the Government and the sheep in the backbench corrals endorsed, underwrote and validated everything the former Minister for Justice and Equality did. Only a few weeks ago the entire cohort of Fine Gael and Labour Party Deputies endorsed, underwrote and validated the actions of the former Minister when they trooped into the Chamber to vote for him without even an audible bleat of dissent. This is not just a jaded Government, it is a Government of hypocrites who have betrayed all hope placed in them by many people in 2011.

The dishonesty and mendacity go on, especially at the top level of the Government, in another crucial issue that is seizing the people, that of the water tax. The night before last one of the most senior surviving Ministers, the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Phil Hogan, went on an RTE television news programme and told the people a blatant falsehood to mislead and deceive them when he said water for under 18 year olds would be free. Simply using a Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government officially supported organisation-----

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