Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It appears to me and many others that the Taoiseach treats his so-called political partners with contempt. This means it is a matter of political luck that the Government has not collapsed already. Any prospect of delivering the national broadband plan would collapse with it. The former Minister, Deputy Naughten, has been criticised. I want to compliment him as a diligent and hard-working Deputy and Minister. He was the only Minister who kept in touch with us. Our colleagues in the Independent Alliance can vouch for this. He briefed us regularly. I thank him and his staff for that. I wish him well. He did his best to advance the broadband process. If anything, he was too anxious to get something delivered. He understands rural Ireland and cares for it deeply. I think he summed up matters very well last week when he said that the Taoiseach is more interested in "opinion polls than telecoms poles" and in "optics than fibre optics". That has been the problem with this Government since its inception. We know about the €5 million that was spent on spin. The dysfunctional nature of this Government was on full display in October 2016, when a row about judicial appointments broke out between Fine Gael and the Minister, Deputy Ross, and his Independent Alliance colleagues. In October 2017, another row between the parties related to the freezing of the assets of senior bankers involved in the tracker mortgage scandal. We know who lost that one - the unfortunate people who are suffering with their mortgages. The Independent Alliance did not win it. There was another example of this instability just last month, when reports emerged that Fine Gael Ministers were privately blaming the Independent Alliance for being responsible for a major part of the health budget overspend.

See this speech in context