Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I would not do it otherwise. It is a statement. This is the problem with the Government, with its head in its hands. It is a problem it has failed to deal with and it sticks in my craw to hear Deputies from Sinn Féin, who were good at the petrol bombs, and their groups and rewarders, and burning down places. Nobody wants a place burned down. I condemn from the bottom of my heart anybody who burns a building. A burned building is no use to anyone. However, good people are being labelled when a place is burned. There was an attempted burning of an old school in Fethard, County Tipperary. It turned out there was not even a rumour it was going to be used. Straight away the media jumped on this. The Garda has said it had no information whatsoever. There were no rumours or anything else. It could have been ordinary people doing something they should not have been doing in that building, like sometimes happens. It could have been an accident or anything else. There were no refugees going into it. There was no mention or rumour of it. I make that quite clear.

The Government thinks it can peddle this "Croppies lie down" narrative as if it knows everything. It has utterly failed to house 14,000 people. Now people are telling us there are 1,000 IPAS applicants. It is horrific if they are on the streets of Dublin. There was also a young woman who died in Dublin during the week and was buried in Roscrea. She was from Roscrea and died homeless on the streets of Dublin. All of these problems are being compounded and they want to flood the people. The Taoiseach tells me that 14,000 people who came in with no paperwork were all trafficked in. They should get their heads out of the sand and be fair and respectful to the people out there; the electorate. They should remember they have to face these people. They have failed to deal with the housing crisis. They have failed to deal with the health crisis and many other crises. That is the situation and that is what they are doing. They have failed miserably and are failing miserably to deal with this. They need to put the people in and support the Garda. We will have between 4,000 and 5,000 exits from An Garda Síochána in the next couple of years and the Government cannot recruit people. The Minister is the woman who, I respectfully suggest, needs to wake up and not be demonising the good, decent women, grandparents and children in Roscrea and trying to put them down. It is insulting. It is gross. It is crass. It is beneath her but we do not expect anything better from this Government only to piddle down on the Irish people.

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