Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

In 2011, the people, especially in the west, went to the polls in anticipation of a new era, a more transparent way with fewer quangos and a listening ear. A few months later that same year, in Roscommon, east Galway and Leitrim, the people who had received a commitment a few months earlier by letter and a recorded interview got the shock of their lives when they heard that the accident and emergency department that they needed would be closed. With a broken promise, the doors closed. Medical doctors were replaced by spin doctors and the people in all that area were left to contend with two hours travelling to a hospital.

In the same year, I received a telephone call at 11.45 p.m. asking whether we would participate in a peatlands forum. I spoke to the Taoiseach for a while and I said that whatever could help a bad situation, we would try to make it work. The conclusions of that forum are there but what those who gave of their time voluntarily got two or three months later was helicopters, planes, emergency response units and the Garda all around them calling them criminals.

In the same era, we were told that not one red cent would be given away - Dublin's way or Frankfurt's way - and then we heard of a something called a game changer. When that part of history is now written, we see the reality. The people have been bullied. The Government and our representatives in Europe were not the whistleblowers for their people.

Only this week, I spoke to a young child. Some 380 letters have come to the west this week about evictions and all they want for Christmas is a home. The reality in education is the drop in capitation grants. We heard pledges on student fees, but what has happened is they have gone up. Europe, aided and abetted by the Government, is dictating the pace.

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