Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

Methinks the Minister, Deputy Howlin, doth protest too much. If anybody was in any doubt about how out of touch this Government is, he or she would be shattered by the content and demeanour of what we have been subjected to today. That the Taoiseach would attempt to use elderly women, the victims of symphysiotomy, who were butchered in their youth as an example of how great his Government has been is a continuation of that abuse when he knows that as we sit here, they are assembled across the road with the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and Amnesty International to plead for the Government to overturn the scheme it has thrown in front of them. That is a graphic illustration of how utterly out of touch this Government is.

It is the case that it says one thing but the reality is entirely different for people outside these gates. I do not agree with the people who say this Government has not achieved anything. It has achieved something that nobody believed would ever be possible. It has succeeded in galvanising an opposition throughout this country from the self-employed to struggling farmers to unemployed people to people who have seen their children leave these shores and in unleashing a mass movement which is unprecedented in modern times in absolute opposition to the policies of this Government, best presented in its religious adherence to the toxic brand and dead duck, which is Irish Water.

The Government has pauperised and penalised the middle ground and driven them out of the ranks where perhaps they would have traditionally supported it into an opposition that is united against it. If the Government is as confident as it says it is - a confidence that was very much belied by the worried faces and sourpusses behind the Taoiseach earlier - end this lame duck Administration and go to the people.

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