Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Beidh mé ag caint i gcoinne an rúin seo. Níl muinín againn as Leo Varadkar. Bhris sé na rialacha agus is gá dó a bheith freagrach as sin. This Government has been in office for just four months and in that short period we have witnessed displays of incompetence and chaos of record proportions. This Government was born of necessity. The old guard came together to keep change out, to hold back the tides of progress and to hold onto business as usual.

When he was Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar leaked a confidential draft contract to a third party, to his friend. The refusal of the current Taoiseach to hold the Tánaiste and leader of Fine Gael to account left a no confidence motion as the only sanction available to us as an Opposition. Predictably, the Government responds with accusations, name-calling and spin, and that is its choice. That is its business. No amount of insults, innuendo or mud slinging by Fine Gael can alter the facts, and the facts of what happened are not in dispute. Leo Varadkar, while he was Taoiseach, leaked confidential Government information to his friend. He can offer no credible reason for his actions. His claim that he was acting in the interests of the taxpayer, or that the information was already in the public domain, are threadbare. Those defences collapsed on the floor of the Dáil last week.

The truth is there is no acceptable reason for what happened. This was not incompetence. It was not a mistake. This was a conscious decision by Leo Varadkar to leak inside information to his friend, and now the current Taoiseach stands idly by and Micheál Martin's failure to act is a failure of leadership. The Government claims that expressing no confidence in the Tánaiste is disproportionate to the conduct of Leo Varadkar but here is the truth. The truth is that if a junior civil servant or any departmental official leaked a confidential document they would be sacked, end of story. When Leo Varadkar leaked this document he was the Taoiseach. He was the head of government and that position comes with the highest level of responsibility, with the greatest need for ethical and honest conduct and, therefore, it comes with a greater demand for accountability.

What angers ordinary people is that the Fine Gael leader's actions are par for the course, and part of the insider cosy club politics that has done so much damage to our country. This is a broken politics, one that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil want people to believe has been left behind, but the politics of the cosy club really never went away. There are favours for friends, connections to pals in the world of high finance and access to power through a simple text message, while Debenhams workers and survivors of mother and baby homes are frozen out, fighting to have their voices heard. This is a very Fine Gael thing.

The Government argues that Deputy Varadkar's behaviour was a technical or procedural error; "not best practice" they called it. They say it bears no relevance to the bread and butter issues facing ordinary people but how very wrong they are. The Fine Gael cosy club culture is very relevant to the bread and butter reality of people's lives because it is about access to power. It is about what decisions are made and in whose interest, whether in the interests of ordinary people or vested interests, Ministers' friends and personal contacts.

As we debate the motion this evening, workers and families are struggling. Many are coping with the loss of life and the loss of livelihoods as a result of a once in a century pandemic. They also face the uncertainty of Brexit and we are coming to the end of what has been an extraordinarily difficult year for our people. Our people are entitled to much better from the Government than those in power playing by the rulebook of the old boys' network.

The cosy club insider culture that dominates Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil is why those parties fail workers and families again and again. It is the reason why governments come and governments go, but nothing really changes for ordinary people.

I could stand here and delve into Fine Gael’s past episodes with corruption and insider connections. I could list the scandals, the tribunals, the abuses of power and it would take me all night, and it would get us nowhere. This is not about the past. This is very much about how Government is run today. Here is what I know for sure. As long as housing policy in this State is designed for developers and landlords, we will never fix the housing crisis. As long as health policy is driven by profit and privatisation, we will never have a strong public health service. As long as economic decisions are made to favour the golden circle, we will never have a fair economy that delivers for workers and families. The truth is that for so long as this rotten insider culture is tolerated, nothing will ever change. Houses will remain unaffordable, rents will keep going up and up and a generation will have to settle for the box room in their parents’ house as a home for themselves and their own families. Our health system will continue to struggle with overcrowded hospitals, citizens on trolleys and children left years waiting, sometimes in agony, for treatment and for care.

That is the price of government for the privileged few at the expense of the many. It is a price that generations have paid and it has cost us dearly. It can no longer be tolerated. It is the politics where Fine Gael’s Brian Hayes moves seamlessly from Government to chief lobbyist for the banks and then sits across the table from his Fine Gael friends in government when denying mortgage holders breaks for their mortgage. It is the politics where Fine Gael’s Michael D’Arcy, having failed miserably to rein in the insurance industry and its crippling premiums, moves from the Department of Finance to the world of high finance. The people we represent demand change - it is as simple as that. They look for a future of fairness, of kindness, but above all, of equality. They look for the possibility of better politics, where we can finally begin to realise the Ireland of the Proclamation and the vision of our better angels, a real republic that prioritises ordinary citizens and upholds the principle of good, honest government. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael clubbed together to deny that change. People now see these parties, which desperately cling to the past, back doing what they do best: looking after the well-connected and the well-off, while ordinary people are left behind.

It is lamentable that the Green Party, in which so many placed hope for change, have remained so quiet in all of this. Their silence speaks volumes.

After four months in power, this coalition has been riven with scandal. Deputy Leo Varadkar’s actions have undermined politics, they have undermined the Government and they have undermined the State. Sinn Féin said the old ways would not be tolerated on our watch in opposition, and we will be held to that commitment. We are now calling time on the politics of the cosy club. Former Taoiseach and serving Tánaiste, Leo Varadkar, has asked for a fool’s pardon. Deputy Varadkar is no fool. The people will not be fooled by the guff, bluster and bravado of bullish Government Members, whose sole concern is self-preservation.

This scandalous behaviour that we have discovered, by the way, cannot be solved by Ministers simply picking their friends more carefully. Leo Varadkar, when Taoiseach, leaked a confidential document to a friend. He was caught and now he must be held accountable.

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