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

I sincerely congratulate the Ceann Comhairle on his election, which is a great honour for him, his family and his supporters. You got a great endorsement from a majority in the House, which must be very much respected.

I humbly thank the people of County Kerry who voted for me and sent me here again. I thank all the people who worked on my campaign and I appreciate their efforts very much. Over the next number of days and weeks, a very serious job must be carried out by the political parties and Independents elected to this new Dáil. I want to see that sped up. On the previous occasion, more than 70 days passed before a Taoiseach was elected and a programme for Government was developed and brought forward. We should speed this up by ensuring the people who need to talk will do so. I compliment Sinn Féin as it has been proactive in saying it will speak with everybody and trying to make that happen. I know everybody else will put their shoulder to the wheel. The job of every one of us here, regardless of our politics, is to work for the people who elected us and to do the best for the people of this country. We must really tear at that and not be slow about it. It is important to have our chairman or boss in place and with that done, it is important that this job of work has to be tackled very quickly.

No longer will the people of Ireland stand for a position where a Minister for Health can say an issue relating to health is not his responsibility and a Deputy should talk to the HSE about it. That will not be tolerated in future. People will not accept that others must wait for years for respite services as they do in County Kerry now. People will not be willing to accept that if they have a child with special needs who requires speech and language therapy, he or she must wait for two or three years. that will not be acceptable in the future. It will also not be acceptable in the future that if older people, perhaps in their 80s or 90s, go into hospital, they will have to spend two or three days in emergency department before they can get into a ward.

We must learn from mistakes. I am not standing here today just to bash the previous Government or the one before it and say they did everything wrong. I am outlining what people want in future. They want proper services. They want a Taoiseach, Ministers, a Government and an Opposition that will work towards that. They want us to do our genuine best and leave nobody behind. How we achieve that is up to each one of us but we must put our hearts and souls into this to ensure the people of Ireland get the services they so genuinely deserve.

Finally, one issue that an incoming Government will have to tackle is cyberbullying that results in suicide. This affects younger people in an awful way. We must tackle the problem. We must be able to live in a society where that type of nonsense or rubbish will not be tolerated. The people up at night bullying people and writing dirty things about them must be stopped and not tolerated in an intelligent and modern society.

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