Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I too am glad to speak this evening on the Cabinet posts. I want to sa chéad dul síos mo chomhghairdeas a ghabháil le gach éinne. I congratulate the new Cabinet and the new appointees from the Independent ranks and wish them and their families well. It is a big honour and an enjoyable day for them. It will also be a very difficult and challenging role.

As regards the talks, I fully agree with Deputy Harty. We could all have sat on our hands and done nothing. I engaged with other Independents and everybody else who was interested in seeking out a stable government if we could. We had to deal with the result that the people threw up. I am very thankful to the people of Tipperary for sending me back here for another term, however long it might be. I felt it was incumbent on me to get involved and try to support a positive outcome. The people and the country needed a government and we have got one.

Although I have been critical of the Taoiseach in the past and I did not vote for him today for that reason, I compliment him and his team, especially Deputies Coveney, Bruton, Noonan and Harris, on the way they engaged with us, seriously, meaningfully and respectfully. It was a very interesting process. I learnt a lot from it and got an insight into how we can achievechange on many items I was angry about, and frustrated with, during the last Dáil. Politics is the art of the possible. This document that we worked long and hard on, with the Government and the officials and facilitators - I thank them as well – was a decent effort at a providing roadmap. I thank Fianna Fáil too for providing a roadmap to show how Independents could support a government. We could have gone back to the people, but what would that have solved? I do not think we would be thanked for it. There are many other areas that the cost of another election - €40 million plus - could be spent on. There is so much in this document that I am pleased is in there. There were many long and late nights, including last night, spent trying to get different formulas, sentiments, sentences and statements of intent in the programme for Government.

I am pleased with the reception we got. Obviously there were compromises and disappointments, but there is much in it that we can try to work with. I gave a commitment to be constructive but also to hold the Taoiseach and all the Ministers to account for the issues and for the timeframes. There are aspirations too. I know everything will not be met. There has to be full engagement and I hope there will be, as promised by the Taoiseach the first time we met, in the new type of parliament we have now with different arrangements.

Am I all right for time?

See this speech in context