Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I too congratulate every single Deputy in the House who has been elected, and their families as well. This is always a very special day for newly-elected Deputies. It is a day of relief for Deputies who have been re-elected. It is also a very colourful day. We had some stars of the show today, in terms of the vintage cars that were on display outside on the plinth. I never cease to admire the marvel of the Healy-Rae marketing techniques.

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The Healy-Raes constantly come up with surprises. It is, as I said, a colourful day and an important one for the families of those who have been elected for the first time.

In line with practice on each occasion when the Dáil has failed to nominate a person to serve as Taoiseach at its first meeting, I would like to outline our party's approach to trying to form a Government in the coming weeks. Based on the promises which we made to the nearly 500,000 people who supported us in the general election, we have agreed our priorities for urgent and sustained action that we believe should be delivered by the next Government. We have also agreed our approach as to who we might serve in government with. I want to briefly detail these. First of all, however, it is important to make a point concerning the mandates which we all carry as Members of Dáil Éireann. There have been often loud and angry claims made in the past two weeks that there is one position which has emerged victorious from the election and that we should simply stay quiet and get in line. Anyone refusing to do so has been condemned as part of an elite establishment, trying to somehow block the will of the people. These are classic populist tropes, common on the left and the right, where some parties claim that they uniquely represent the people and deny the legitimacy of the mandates held by others. Every party and Deputy elected to this House has both a right and a duty to represent the mandate they received. In order to deliver functioning government, compromise is required. This is a belief for which we have been attacked repeatedly in this place. However, we reject the idea that there is no limit to be set to the compromises one should take. Demanding that others just stay quiet and abandon their core beliefs in order to grab power because "Sure isn't that what big people do" is not something with which we agree. Equally, the attempt to use profound social problems as a justification for pushing aside legitimate concerns about democratic practices is deeply cynical.

Regardless of whether people agree with us, Fianna Fáil fought the recent election based on a clear set of principles and policy objectives. We are committed to trying to form a coalition Government which will agree to take urgent and sustained action on these objectives and which respects core principles about what is legitimate behaviour in a democratic republic. As we have said repeatedly over recent years, we believe that the next Government must be based on a belief that State action is required to improve key services and to address emergencies in housing, health, climate change and the cost of living. We are very clear in that we reject the idea that major increases in taxes, especially on enterprise, can be introduced without causing dramatic damage, especially to workers and to public finances. However, while protecting the core economic strength of our country, dramatically more can and must be done.

We have identified a series of priority areas which we are seeking to discuss with parties and Deputies. On the overall economic and financial framework for a new Government, we believe that Ireland must remain an open, trading economy with a pro-enterprise tax policy. There is an opportunity to increase public spending but there are significant limits to this. We believe that action on every element of the housing emergency is required. This must include a major increase in the building of social and affordable housing, support to increase the skilled workforce and capacity required to achieved new home-building targets, and regulation of the rental sector to prevent market distortion and push rent downwards. On health, we support the implementation of long-term reforms but we believe that more immediate action is also required. Therefore, we want the new Government to agree to both short and long-term actions to start repairing broken relations with health professionals, and also to agree to develop mental health services without any further delay. The next Government must respond to nine years of delay and inaction on climate change and biodiversity. There is no easy way of meeting this challenge. Action on all fronts is required, including carbon taxation, a radical approach to renewable energy and dramatically increasing action to not only protect but to restore our natural environment. Education should be a priority for the next Government and, in particular, supporting schools which serve children in disadvantaged communities. We simply must transform the experiences of many families with children with special needs in terms of their interaction with the State and our education system. We must also urgently address the worst funding crisis in the history of our higher education system.

We believe a new beginning is required to support both urban and rural communities. We need to restore and develop local community development initiatives and to develop a core State community services guarantee. Protecting rural communities must also involve insisting that the Common Agricultural Policy be properly funded and to do more to help farmers in their roles as stewards of both our most important indigenous industry and our natural environment. Already this afternoon there are crucial meetings being held at EU level, as the Taoiseach has mentioned, in respect of the multi-annual framework, which will have profound consequences for the Common Agricultural Policy. I wish the Taoiseach well for the conduct of those negotiations over the coming weeks.

We also need a Government that will step up the fight against crime. This requires more gardaí, a new approach to community and rural policing, tougher legislation to target drug gangs and strengthening the essential role of the Special Criminal Court in bringing to justice people who think they are untouchable. We must also put an end to the crisis in our Defence Forces and restore morale of our military personnel and pride in our services. We believe that a new Government must also show urgency in relation to Europe and Northern Ireland. As we can all see, an enormous amount of work is required on securing Northern Ireland's special economic status and Dublin must return to being a leader in the work of challenging sectarianism and building reconciliation. A new Government must also be resolutely in favour of Ireland being a positive member of the European Union.

For a new Government to succeed, it must involve a shared belief in core principles about democratic politics. Its members must be able to trust the good faith of those they serve with. They must be transparent and open with each other and they must reform how Government works in key areas. These are our priorities for the new Government we want to help form. As we have said both publicly and in private conversations, we are seeking to work with Deputies who agree with this core approach. We understand that no two parties share the exact same priorities and compromises are required. However, every party is also entitled to set a limit to the compromises they are willing to adopt. Today and throughout the last two weeks, we have been roundly attacked by Sinn Féin and others for insisting that we will abide by our statement to our voters that we will not share Government with them. Our focus remains our positive agenda for a new Government but given the fact that this issue is dominating much of what others are saying and general commentary, it is necessary to outline why we hold to our position concerning Sinn Féin and to put it on the record without any rancour. I have explained this directly to the Sinn Féin leader, Deputy McDonald, and I will do so briefly here.

First, the fact is that the core policies of our parties are irreconcilable on fundamental issues. Sinn Féin's position is that there needs to be a radical change in public policy towards what they describe as democratic socialism. The party's position is that there needs to be a radical expansion in the role and size of the State which goes well beyond the scope of tackling emergencies in health and housing. This is to be funded by major increases in the taxation of enterprise. Sinn Féin has confirmed repeatedly, including today, that this approach is fundamental to any programme for Government which that party might agree. We have taken them at their word when they say that the core approach of the next Government must be a radical left approach. We simply do not and will not agree with this.

There is also the fundamental issue that we do not believe that Sinn Féin operates to the same democratic standards held by every other party in this House. Deputy McDonald has confirmed that she does not accept any of our criticism, as is her entitlement, of her party's practices and standards. We simply do not agree. This is not simply about the past. The past is important and Sinn Féin's efforts to legitimise a murderous sectarian campaign keeps alive a narrative which is used by dissidents to legitimise their campaigns today. However, this is more fundamentally about today. It is about practices which any party that shares Government with Sinn Féin must accept as normal. Every single time an issue arises about the behaviour of people associated with the provisional movement and today's Sinn Féin, the response is to attack and dismiss. Only when the evidence keeps piling up and the political pressure grows is there any movement. Offers to meet are expressed and calls for co-operation with law enforcement are issued but nothing ever happens. No one ever comes forward. Victims never get justice. When I raised the issue of the systematic cover-up of child abuse by the Provisional IRA, I was called a low-life by Deputies present here today, yet when everything turned out to be true those Deputies, be they old hands or new faces, carried on regardless.

People who accused us of talking about the distant past should please remember the case of Robert McCartney, a 33 year old father of three who, ten years after the ceasefires, was stabbed and beaten to death in a public house full of 70 Sinn Féin activists, none of whom admitted to seeing anything. Under pressure, many of them were briefly suspended by Sinn Féin but now they continue to prosper in the organisation. In fact, one of those activists was hand-selected to be an MLA in December and was appointed as a Minister last month. When challenged about what she had to say regarding the savage murder in question, the new Minister claimed not to have noticed. She asked to meet the family and called for anyone who had information to come forward. This is not the past, it is today.

To be fair, I do not think Bríd and Stephen Quinn should have had to wait for 13 years for an apology from Sinn Féin for the way their beloved son was murdered or about the comments that followed his murder. Repeated anti-Semitism is brushed aside as a small slip. Let us not forget that, allegedly, there have been 27 representatives who have resigned from Sinn Féin citing systemic bullying.

Aggressive online abuse towards political opponents is not an oversight, it is a strategy. Of course there is an approach to government which has received almost no attention in the Dublin-based media but which has raised enormous concerns in Northern Ireland. The use of front groups to receive public funding, the forcing of employees and representatives to sign over wages to the party and the operation of a shadow system of control over ministerial decisions are not inventions of political opponents, they have been documented in great detail. The glorifying of the Provisional IRA is not an accident of one Deputy's exuberance, as Deputy McDonald claims. She has herself praised Provisional IRA units and when she ends speeches with "Tiocfaidh ar lá" I think she knows full and well what the use of that phrase means. Popularised first by the former Deputy, Gerry Adams, for decades it was shouted in our courts to signal a refusal to recognise this democratic Republic. When Deputy McDonald says that her party sees no reason to change its behaviour and that it insists that it be brought into government as it is we fully take her at her word. It is up to others to justify themselves if they accept that Sinn Féin's practices are of no concern to them. However, they have no right to demand of us that we join them in accepting these practices. Our primary focus remains on seeking agreement on a positive agenda of urgent action and long-term reform which we believe the next government should carry out. Within our mandate, we are open to fair compromise and to building a government which will not just talk about change but will actually deliver it. In the time between now and when the Dáil reconvenes, this is what we will seek to do.

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