Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

In October 2019, Deputy Varadkar, as Taoiseach, apologised to the women wronged by the CervicalCheck scandal and promised that no woman would ever have to go through courts again to get justice. Despite that promise, three years later more than 170 women have done just that and have gone through the court system to get justice. Deputy Varadkar was Minister for Health at the time the CervicalCheck scandal happened. However, he said he has no recollection of being informed of it.

As Minister for Health, Deputy Varadkar said, short of an asteroid hitting this planet, the national children's hospital would be built for €750 million and open by 2020. It is currently double that cost - the cost could reach €2 billion before it is open - and will not be open until 2025. It is an incredible situation that a party which prides itself as a party of prudence is actually the party that is presiding over serious cost overruns across capital projects.

When Deputy Varadkar was in his last year as Taoiseach, 35 of the 38 most significant capital projects in the State were over budget, including the national broadband plan, the national maternity hospital and others. It seems that when one puts the word "national" beside a capital project in this country, it adds hundreds of millions of euro to the cost and puts the project way over time.

On his way out of health, Deputy Varadkar cut the mental health budget in the State by a third. He kept a strong interest in health, however, when Taoiseach and leaked a confidential document which was negotiated with the IMO to his friend, who was president of a rival GP group. I asked Deputy Varadkar in the Dáil whether he had ever leaked from Cabinet. After a long and awkward pause, he responded, "Nothing of this nature. All politicians leak from time to time".

During the Covid crisis when lives were extremely restricted and ordinary men and women could not book a table in a bar or restaurant and funeral undertakers, brides and grooms and the hospitality industry were abiding by one set of rules, Deputy Varadkar, along with dozens of others, partied with Katherine Zappone. Similar actions would have led to resignations in other western countries. He was saved because the Attorney General broke a traditional silence and said the rules everybody else was abiding by the time were not actually the rules at all.

Deputy Varadkar presided over the longest and most restrictive lockdowns in Europe. He presided over the only Government in the whole of Europe that closed down the building of homes at that time. Despite the rising number of excess deaths at the moment, he is part of a Government that is still refusing to investigate the high level of excess deaths occurring in this State at the moment.

While Deputy Varadkar has been in power, the North of Ireland has staggered from crisis to crisis. The North is dealt with really only as a crisis by this Government instead of an opportunity for the freedom that Michael Collins once spoke about. As Deputy Varadkar is taking the position of Taoiseach 100 years since the foundation of the Free State and the shocking State executions of republicans by the State, I ask that he use his position to finally put an end to Civil War politics and offer a State apology for those executions that happened more than 100 years ago.

Deputy Varadkar has been part of a Cabinet that has seen one of the worst housing crises in history. There is record homelessness and incredible numbers of deaths of homeless people on the streets. There are record local authority housing waiting lists, record rents and record house prices. He has been part of a Government that has seen record overcrowding in accident and emergency departments and waiting times and hospital waiting lists have become worse for many people across the country.

The party of so-called law and order has seen many parts of this State start to live in fear as the country has become more dangerous for them.

More gardaí have been attacked while Deputy Varadkar has been in government, more gardaí have resigned and fewer are joining the ranks over the past ten years.

Deputy Varadkar is not solely responsible, obviously, for all of these issues, and no political leader can get it right on every single occasion. However, Deputy Varadkar has been the most senior party in government for the past ten years and has to take responsibility for these issues. It gives me no pleasure to list this litany of disasters, but there has been poor judgment, a lack of trust and a harsh Tory political instinct behind many of these decisions. For those reasons, I cannot support his nomination as Taoiseach.

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