Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach's Government, aided and abetted by the Fianna Fáil Party, is stumbling from crisis to crisis. There is a calamity in our health system and there is a homelessness and housing crisis that is spiralling further out of control by the day. Citizens are being crippled by a cost of living crisis in rents, mortgages, child care, property tax and car insurance. To make matters worse, there is the aftermath of the Brexit referendum and the challenges that presents across the island. I am sure the Taoiseach now realises that his handling of the proposal for an all-Ireland forum, a national forum, was clumsy and incompetent.

Just yesterday, the chairperson of the expert commission on water charges, Mr. Joe O'Toole, resigned. The Taoiseach's Government is a mess and the Fianna Fáil leadership is a willing partner in all of this. It has obliged him at every turn, or every U-turn, because the Fianna Fáil Party has done a U-turn on every issue, from saying it would not support Fine Gael in government to water charges, bin charges, NAMA, the national monument on Moore Street, rent certainty and, just last night, banded hours contracts. None of this is in the common good. None of it is in the national interest. It is motivated by the Fianna Fáil leadership's desire to keep Fine Gael in government until it decides to pull the plug at the point most advantageous to itself and its ambition to form a government. There is no other reason for the Fianna Fáil Party's behaviour. It is all about political power. It is not about new politics. It is nothing but the same old story.

The commission on water charges is clearly only a committee to provide the Government and the Fianna Fáil Party with a fig leaf on water charges as part of this partnership Government. Joe O'Toole put it well when he said: "People voted a certain way, Leinster House is not prepared that particular nettle, so we have to find a solution that will have enough sugar on it to make the medicine go down easily." However, Leinster House has not been allowed to deal with this issue. The public has rejected water charges.

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