Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

People in every part of the country are horrified and disgusted by what has occurred in recent days. They do not believe the contradictory statements made in the House by many Government members. There does not seem to be any accountability.

It is equally horrifying that the cost of another tribunal will be loaded on taxpayers, the low and middle income earners who leave for work early each morning in cars for which they have to pay dear insurance. They leave home in the mornings with snot in their noses and they will finish up paying for all the carry-on in this House and the carry-on that went on two or three years ago. They are saying there is no accountability.

We learned last week that the Health Service Executive is not accountable to the Government and the Minister for Health cannot take any HSE manager to task for anything that happens in the organisation. My brother, Michael, and I, as well as many others, have been raising cases of people with cataracts who are going blind and cannot get a 90 minute procedure done. These procedures would cost much less than all of this. Who will pay for it all?

We do not seem to be able to do anything about insurance costs either. We have only reports and investigations. We were told the issue would be sorted out and the Minister for Finance would come back to us on it. I am sure he tried to do so but the story now is that we cannot do anything about rising insurance costs, whether for a young fellow trying to pay car insurance to get to work or an old person trying to insure a car to be able to collect the pension.

We do not seem to be able to sort out the issue of housing either. The Government has been working on this for 12 months and very little progress has been made. Next week, the country will grind to a halt when Bus Éireann workers strike, yet the Taoiseach and his Ministers have not intervened or made any attempt to solve the problem. I do not have time to speak about broadband, over-regulation and many other issues.

If I had my way, I would round up the Ministers opposite, put them in a Transit van, drive them to the Four Courts and let three judges sort them out because it is the taxpayers who will pay for the tribunal. I am sorry about that.

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