Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I will address a point in particular to two Deputies who are not here tonight but perhaps they are watching the debate in their offices on the monitors, namely, the Ministers of State, Deputy John Halligan and Deputy Finian McGrath. The night they signed up to join a Fine Gael-led Government was the night they crossed the line. If tomorrow night they vote to derail a motion supported by the movement of which they were once part, then tomorrow night will be the night when the full implication of their crossing that line becomes clear. One could ask whether those Ministers of State will side with the representatives of the ruling class against the movement of which they were once part and go against the wishes of so many of the people who elected them less than three months ago. Many a Deputy’s career foundered in February against the rock of the people’s resistance to water charges. Those Deputies and others should not be under any illusion that they will necessarily be the last.

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