Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

We have no doubt where this debate is going. The conduct of it is quite shocking. Those on the other side of the House who believe they are debating a Sinn Féin motion, as they repeatedly said, are wrong. We are debating their motion and the outcome of it is clear. After tonight, normal people will look back and say, "He got away with it again". I refer to normal people like a young care worker in a small local hospital who was suspended for seven weeks for daring to put a post on Facebook criticising a management decision to spend multiples of her annual wage, which was less than €30,000 a year at the time, on a piece of art when there was a trolley crisis in her hospital. She did not break a confidentiality. She expressed a widely held view of wasted resources during a health crisis. I refer to normal people like 500 paramedics who joined a breakaway union called NASRA. It was a breakaway, rival union about which the Tánaiste, when he was then Taoiseach, said repeatedly to us in the previous Dáil that the Government could not and would not deal with because it was outside the ICTU camp. He clearly had two sets of morals for two different types of people, namely, his friends and the normal 500 paramedics who work day in, day out for this country.

What really amuses me is how Fianna Fáil and the Green Party are circling the wagons of Leo Varadkar and Fine Gael here tonight, not because they like the Tánaiste, or even most of Fine Gael, not because they believe him - I believe they do not believe him - and not because it is inappropriate and unbecoming of his conduct as Taoiseach to do what he did or because it is true that he was right but because it is true that he was wrong. They are doing it out of self-preservation. Deputy Eamon Ryan's statement stooped very low when he used the climate crisis as a reason for backing this confidence motion in Leo Varadkar. Normal people will be struck tonight by the way Leo Varadkar got away with it again. When they think of Leo Varadkar, they will think of the slogan, "Welfare Cheats Cheat Us All", attacks on NPHET, and this disgraceful excuse of a then Taoiseach lying to everybody and getting away with it again.

See this speech in context