Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I too want to wish every Minister and the Taoiseach the very best. I will not support them in the vote, if one is called, but I wish them well. As I said, during this holy season of Advent I wish a happy and peaceful Christmas to everybody in the House, including the staff and families at home.

Today's announcement is a game of musical chairs, where the self-interest of every Government Deputy is prioritised. Incompetence gets rewarded. Not a single Minister is ever held accountable for not delivering, or for any form of wrongdoing or wasteful spending of taxpayers' money. The legacy of the children's hospital is an unbelievable scandal. Sick children are waiting for all kinds of procedures. It is being built in the wrong place and is taking a long time to complete. The Taoiseach said it would be built by 2020 for €800 million. He knew that would never happen, but he wanted to announce the site and did so. It is a shocking indictment.

All Government speakers referred to children. The Minister, Deputy Ryan, referred to young people taking up the TII rural link scheme with gusto. What else will they take? They do not have the DART, Luas or anything else. The Minister told them they could all live in the country with ten cars in a village because people could carpool. He has been invited by many of us to visit our constituencies. I have nothing personal against him. He knows Tipperary well; his ancestors came from there. He should see the hills of Hollyford and Killinaule. He should visit west Cork, which Deputy Collins represents, and Kerry, which is represented by Deputies Michael and Danny Healy-Rae.

It is just sheer inaccessibility for young people. They have to have a car, otherwise they cannot go to college, work or anywhere. You tell them to take up with gusto and of course they will, because they will take up anything. If my colleague from Waterford came along with his cargo bike and was with good friends, two or three of them would jump onto the front. They go any way to get somewhere because they cannot go anywhere. They are just forgotten about. Our young people are being left behind in every which way. I had two or three nurses in my office last week getting forms stamped, heading off to Australia. They are qualified young people with their lives ahead of them. That is what is wrong.

As I said, I spent some time in St. Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin recently. I had excellent care in the public hospital and I want to put that on record. The majority of the staff were from India and elsewhere. The nurses and all the rest were just tremendous. We are just in a brain drain and a swap-around. I have a qualified nurse at the moment back from Australia. They are making it so difficult for her – Joanna is her name – to get back registered as nurse. We are crying out for nurses and they are ran off their feet to keep wards and everything else committed. Why? She was told if she was from one of the agencies from India or wherever she would be straight in. She has to go through an arduous procedure. This country is tied up in bureaucracy.

We had three nice, ambitious speeches from the three new leaders. Today, I said it was like “Lanagan’s Ball”. It will be Hannigan’s wake for a lot of people, if we are not careful. All we want is the snuff and for someone to do the caointe cáin and there are plenty of them here as well. The Tánaiste, Deputy Martin, would know the proper Irish spelling of caointe cáin. Plenty of them as well. All of the grim reapers will be coming. The Government is just squeezing the lifeblood out of people. The Irish people are energetic and they will not be knocked down. They are energetic, enthusiastic and vibrant like their leaders were in 1916, 1921 and 1922. We look forward to commemorating. The Tánaiste came to Tipperary to give the oration for the Liam Lynch’s 100th anniversary in April. We look forward to commemorating the leader of the Irish Republican Army in the Knockmealdown Mountains close to homestead. We look forward to it, however it is with embarrassment.

I stood well back, out the backyard, last week celebrating the Free State because of issues that have happened linger with me. However, apart from that, we do not deserve to have the honour of celebrating because we are not fulfilling the roles, aims and objectives they spilled and gave their lifeblood away for. I talk about Collins and they are both below Collins. It is such a farce. The two of you are kind of a hybrid. I think the Minister, Deputy Ryan, told them to do hybrid on this and will get the mic every second word. It was farcical. He was spinning in his grave because they do not represent the values of what he and all the republicans gave their life for. That is my honest feeling and that is what people are telling me out on the street, in the laneways and in my clinics. They must be telling them, unless their cluaiseanna are dúnta completely, they wear earmuffs or they walk around with headphones on and do not want to meet anyone.

However, they will have to meet them soon enough. They will be waiting in the long grass. The grass is growing in Tipperary and it is growing well. This frost now will set it back a bit but I believe it will come back stronger and the roots will reach. We do not need the Minister of State, Senator Hackett. As I said earlier, we are not allowed even to cut enough holly for the crib.

The Minister talked about reinvigorating forestry. Every farmer that has a 30-year contract has a long contract to wait for his or her money. I said this before. Any person who plants anything, whether it is potatoes - which my family were renowned for, McGrath’s spuds - beets, which we had, or carrots have a long wait. I will get some big ones for the Minister if he would like. They are nice with a bit of butter and salt. I am just making the point that anyone who has entered into the contract for forestry and planted in good faith into the schemes have a bitter taste. They will never again grow a tree or anyone belonging to them or their neighbours because they cannot get the licence to cut them. Why should they have to get a licence? You reap what you sow. My God, the Government will reap what it sows too and that date is not far away either. But sin scéal eile. If they plant the trees, they should be allowed to cut them. Timber factories and industries are crying out. The price of timber is going up because we have to import it. It is a mockery that we cannot get through this. We brought in legislation, which I voted against, and my colleagues were annoyed with me. They said any legislation was better than none. That was bad legislation and it was useless, toothless and fruitless. It has not and will not deliver.

I refer to the hospital waiting lists and the housing lists. We are a wealthy country. Sorry if my remarks have been oppressive. Have they got permission from their masters in Europe?

They did not have the gumption to stand up to them and or the interest in building the houses. The Tánaiste’s party had a proud record of building houses in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, as well as in the noughties when people got naughty all over the place and they wanted money, money, money. They went off in Hally's trucks from Ardfinnan. I do not know how they would be travelling now, if Deputy Eamon Ryan was there, but there were 40 men in a back of a lorry in the cold. There were firms sitting in them, going down to Kilkenny and into Clonakilty to build schemes of houses under Fianna Fáil Governments. We have failed spectacularly to build them.

As for bureaucracy, now we talk about changing planning laws. The Minister, Deputy Ryan, talked about a 10% or a tenfold increase on the amount of renewables. We have heard it all before. It is so far away. I want renewables, renewable energy,including wind energy, solar energy and wind from wave power. When will it happen? It is all tied up in knots and reams. There are the mandarins and the Departments and the Minister’s friends in An Taisce. He spoke of stopping people objecting but there was no mention of An Taisce, which is the biggest quango of all because it held up a factory in County Kilkenny. However, the former Taoiseach called it out in the Dáil one day in a reply to me and now the factory is under construction, thank God. It had no issues with the plant, the emissions or anything else, but it had a fundamental idea that we had too many cows, so it stopped a plant and 200 high-quality jobs. We were lucky to hold on to the Dutch cheese firm that was doing it.

The Government should listen and think when divides the Cabinet into subcommittees. It should think and it should get things moving, because they are not moving. They are moving in their heads. They are moving paper from office to office. They are back and forward, over and hither and nothing is happening. They are going from Billy, to Tom, to Ned, to Jack, to Mary.

Now the Government has a new Chief Whip, who I wish well. I look forward to working with her and I worked with all of the Whips. I do not know how hard she will be in terms of waving the whip but I wish her well. I thank Deputy Chambers for when he was the Whip, because we co-operated on many issues. If the Government wants support, it will be from this side of the House but it has to have meaningful, realistic policies, not balderdash and poppy schemes, such as setting whatever the Minister said to set in the south-facing windows. They would be fairly well perished tonight on the south-facing windows, as they would have been last week.

I will go back to the issue of climate change before I finish. I am not a climate change denier but I will say again something I said last week. I remember breaking ice with my sister 48 years ago so that the cows could drink the water from the pond. We had to break it with a sledgehammer. We always have had climate change but now it is all about control of the people. It is an absolute con job. The Government just want to frighten the poor, misfortunate people out there tonight who cannot heat their homes-----

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