Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am happy to rise to vote confidence in the Tánaiste. At a time when the nation is holding its breath, many people are striving to demonstrate solidarity with those who are suffering considerably as a result of the Covid crisis, people's mental health is on the line, isolation is affecting people and businesses are struggling just to survive, Sinn Féin comes up with this attempt to blow up an error, one for which the Tánaiste has been fully accountable in the House, into a nuclear incident and create a DEFCON 1 environment, which Sinn Féin believes it can thrive in with its hollow rhetoric pounded out in the Chamber once again and its troops coming in one after another to read scripts and draw parallels to events that occurred long ago to try to muster a sense of division within our community.

What most angers people who follow sport is seeing someone go into the penalty area, dive and, after writhing and screaming on the ground, look for the red card and a penalty. That is deep cynicism; it is not the beautiful game of football that engenders the commitment and courage that we all admire. We face a similar situation here. This motion is motivated by cynicism and is a return to the worst form of tribal politics where we seek to portray our opponents in the blackest colours we can dream up. One after another, people have come into the Chamber with their theatrical descriptions of insiders and hollow terms like "capitalists" and "Black and Tans". These are the sorts of image that people are trying to conjure in a debate like this one.

We are seeing tribal politics across the globe. We need to pull up so that we can understand where this will bring us. We all look with disdain at the fake news and vicious characterisation of opponents in other countries and at the pandering to prejudice that has divided many communities. Ireland is fortunate that we have not had those divisions. We need to find a politics that is more honest with the people and faces up squarely to the sorts of challenge that people are trying to contend with in their daily lives. That is the work of a parliament. Sadly, we seem to think that politics should be about this theatrical approach. We are sent here to try to resolve differences and conflicts, not to create division.

Leo Varadkar is a politician who has done that throughout his career. He sought to progress change in a community where he understood that change is disruptive and can hurt people. He has sought to bring people with us.

People are looking to politics now for competence and compassion. That is what Leo Varadkar has shown, especially during this difficult Covid-19 crisis, but his political opponents want to drag him down. That is where this motion has come from. It is trying to prolong the sense of division and damage. It is directly out of the stable of fake news and the echo chamber of social media that they seek to drive those messages through.

Politics can be and will be better than that. We will win this motion of confidence and allow this Government, which has a unique balance, to bring us to a much better Ireland.

See this speech in context