Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin for putting down this motion. Have the Minister and the Minister of State - an bheirt Airí - any shame? I know they do not have respect for many groups and organisations in this country and for our front-line workers across a plethora of areas, but the Minster's former colleague Noel Dempsey admitted 22 years ago that this was a problem and had to be sorted out. It has been going on since then. The Minister is here with pious platitudes, talking about an enormous surplus that the Government is going to have. It will be gigantic and yet the Government cannot look after the people who save lives and put themselves on the line to go out and replace ambulances in so many cases because the ambulance service has been driven into the ground and almost finished, with the engines blown out of them and paramedics leaving. They are fatigued having criss-crossed the country just to tick boxes that a call and response is done in so many minutes or seconds after the call went in. It is a con job.

The Minister is the best con artist that ever came into this House. I know him for a long time and I know what kind of a bluffer he is, along with the Dublin brigade before him. This is scandalous. The firefighters walked out tonight in disgust because the Minister would not respect them. He told them he had nothing to give to them. He tried to blame the Local Government Management Agency, LGMA. The LGMA has clearly stated it does not have the money to pay them. The Minister must get in or get out: either put out the fire or let the house burn.

The Government does not care but it will get some burning when it goes to the polls. My God, there will not be enough fire engines or water to stop the fire. People are sick, sore and sorry. They are tired of the Government's pious platitudes, with the green tail wagging the dog and all the kinds of policies that drive people off the land. The Government will not look after the people who looked us, the Garda men and women, and the wonderful firefighter men and women. I meet them every week in Bray when they are up for the training sessions from all over the country. They do five or six weeks training each year. They have to be on call. They cannot go to a wedding, a church mass or a meeting because they must be on call and within 3 km or within five minutes or less of their stations. They do this gallantly. They do it nobly and they want to do it.

They do not want to be on strike. They want to be at home and at the beck and call of the service. I salute them for giving the skeleton service at the moment to ensure that up and down the country, and especially in Tipperary, there will be firemen and women to stay to put out fires and look after us. The Government, however, does not deserve to be looked after. It deserves an bóthar díreach. It deserves the door. Get out of this place and leave it to somebody who can run it.

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