Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As Deputy Martin Kenny said, we are here today because Fine Gael in government has a problem in regard to cronyism. It has a problem of doing favours with insiders. It has a big problem with being held to account when caught out. This is the second time in three weeks that a Fine Gael member of Government has had to come before the Dáil to answer questions about his or her conduct. First up was the Tánaiste and Fine Gael leader to answer for leaking confidential information to his political ally when he was Taoiseach. Now, the Fine Gael Minister for Justice is before us regarding the highly questionable manner in which the former Attorney General and Fine Gael supporter, Séamus Woulfe, was appointed to the Supreme Court. Both cases stink to the high heavens. Both the Tánaiste and the Minister for Justice had to be dragged into the Dáil kicking and screaming.

Why did that happen? Fine Gael does not do accountability. However, it does arrogance, in spades. Whether it is the former Minister of State, Brian Hayes, seamlessly moving to become the champion of the banks and the vultures, or another Fine Gael former Minister of State, Michael D'Arcy, moving straight into a cushy job as a lobbyist for high finance, time and again we see the arrogance of the Fine Gael old boys' network at work. This arrogance is not without consequence. The behaviour exposes all that is rotten in Irish politics - favours for friends, cronyism and insider deals. Who pays for it? The ordinary people pay. It is the people looking for a home or waiting for a hospital bed, families struggling with mortgages or insurance costs and workers looking for decent jobs and wages. Instead of focusing on what is best for our people, Fine Gael each time focuses on what is best for its friends in high places. People go without so Fine Gael's friends can have it all. Fine Gael arrogance is at the centre of this controversy.

The Minister insulted the Dáil for weeks by resisting calls to come to the Dáil and answer questions. Now, she is insulting people's intelligence by offering implausible scenarios. The truth is that this judicial appointment was an old-fashioned political stroke. It is as simple as that. Instead of bringing clarity, the Minister has sought to muddy the waters in the hope that people will just tire of the matter. I hate to break it to Members, but that is not going to work. Everyone knows that this was a shady deal and that it stinks. They know what it looks like when people in power box off a job for their political friend, because they have seen it all previously. The reason this process appears to be all over the place is that there was no process. The dogs in the street know that. The reason the Minister cannot explain properly how she whittled four names down to one is that she did not. It was not even as crass as saying "eeny, meeny, miny, moe"; it was saying "eeny, eeny, eeny, Woulfe".

This deal had been done before Deputy McEntee became Minister for Justice. The appointment was not even decided in the Department of Justice. It was decided in Fine Gael. Everybody knows that it was a done deal. Fine Gael is now trying to take the people for fools, just as it took the Taoiseach for a fool and kept him in the dark about an appointment to the highest court in the land. So determined was Fine Gael to get its man through, it ran rings around the Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, to ensure it happened. It is not often I agree with a member of Fianna Fáil and it is rare for me to agree with Dermot Ahern. However, the former Minister for Justice was bang on point when he wrote:

It now seems that leading Fine Gael members pulled a fast one by rushing to fill the Supreme Court vacancy with their own former attorney general. Incoming Taoiseach Micheál Martin should have smelled a rat. He's long enough around.

Fine Gael wiped Micheál's eye by rewarding a loyal friend with a highly paid and very powerful job. For all the talk of new politics from Fine Gael, we are being dragged back to the old days and the old ways. It is the culture of arrogance so typical of Fine Gael that ensures that Governments come and go, but nothing changes.

People are sick to their back teeth of it. They are sick of the political strokes, the who-one-knows manoeuvring and Fine Gael cronyism. They are determined that the days of the old boys' network and insider backroom deals are well and truly numbered. The Minister had an opportunity to come clean and confirm what everybody knows. It is deeply regrettable and disappointing that she did not take that opportunity. She was a party to a Fine Gael old boys' club political stroke. That is the long and the short of it. She should come clean. She will have a further opportunity to do that during the questions and answers, and I urge her to take it.

See this speech in context