Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The reason we are describing this as an exercise in cynicism is as follows. There was a legitimate debate in the House a couple of weeks ago as to when we should have the budget and on the size of the budget package. The Government responded, moved the date of the budget forward and will now deliver a budget package bigger than previously planned. However, instead of now allowing the Government to knuckle down and get on with that job, the motion Sinn Féin has tabled would result in the dissolution of the Dáil, the hanging up of posters and a paralysis in Irish politics for the weeks and months ahead. It would result in a delay in delivering help to hard-working families at a time when, as Sinn Féin rightly highlights, they so need it. In many ways it is a mini-version of the very difficult situation in Northern Ireland that it rightly castigates. It wants to plunge this jurisdiction into paralysis, just like Northern Ireland now sees paralysis as well.

Unfortunately, it is more sinister than that. As my colleague, the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, rightly outlined, we hear very eloquent speeches that prey on people's legitimate fears and concerns and offer beautiful sound bites, very well articulated, but no solutions. The people do not need that. What the people need now is a Government that will, in the face of massive global challenges, get on with progressing an agenda that will deliver for them, their families and their futures, and that is what we are doing.

We are doing it in the new Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, where we see massive increases in student grants coming, changes to adjacency and income thresholds, and five technological universities now bringing higher education into the regions, not just the cities. We are launching our apprenticeship action plan, delivering record numbers of apprentices to build the homes we need and to retrofit our buildings. We are determined to reduce the cost of education. Sinn Féin criticises the cost of education here, but a fact it does not talk about much is that students in Northern Ireland are charged over €2,000 more just to go to college every year than they are charged here. Shame on Sinn Féin. We are reforming the CAO process. We are giving out free laptops to more than 17,000 students. We have introduced funding streams to help autistic students to get into college and to have pathways and programmes for students with intellectual disabilities. We have abolished fees for post-leaving certificate courses. We will deliver 200 more medicine places over the next five years and new pathways and structures for our PhD students.

That is what we are doing to try to make a real and tangible difference in an important area of people's lives and the education system of our country. All of that is happening at a time when Sinn Féin offers division, a menu of empty rhetoric and stagnation and a proactive policy of paralysis. Of course Sinn Féin has a right to table a no-confidence motion, but that does not mean tabling one is the right thing to do. Shortly, a very significant majority of the people's representatives in this House will give Sinn Féin its answer.

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