Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Health is an holistic issue and we deserve a Government which recognises that. We need to ensure that staffing emergency departments, creating healthy workplaces and implementation of disability rights are taken seriously by this Government. It is welcome to see the incoming Taoiseach's re-commitment to ratifying the UNCRPD optional protocol, but we need meaningful measures to make change for people's everyday lives, such as scrapping the Green Paper, ending the means test on the carer’s allowance, ensuring assessments are available, and that diagnosis leads to supports in the home or the classroom. Without that, promises to unblock the backlog in assessments are empty rhetoric.

In other areas of Government policy we need to go beyond rhetoric. We need to go beyond censure and hear more than words which censure Netanyahu. This Government needs to act with Spain to recognise Palestinian statehood. It needs to pass the occupied territories Bill, with the support of Opposition. It needs to create meaningful sanctions on the Israeli Government to help bring about a ceasefire and an end to the suffering in Gaza. Deeds, not words.

Today’s vote, we know, is a foregone conclusion, but how the incoming Taoiseach uses his new position is key. This Government cannot pretend this is business as usual. Ireland is not working for far too many. The Labour Party will not support this cosmetic changeover. Ours is a vision for a fairer and more equal Ireland, supported by an interventionist State. We cannot be accomplices to a Government which does not share our values of equality, solidarity and fairness. I do undertake, however, that we will continue to work constructively from Opposition, to disagree agreeably, as they say. We did not, in fact, play populism on the vote on the Order of Business today. As a serious party, we will do all we can to hold this new Taoiseach and this Government to account. We will also commit to working with them where we can achieve common purpose. We will be honest and fair. Our democracy is too precious to be denigrated in this House or on social media. I am asking the new Taoiseach to reciprocate that undertaking.

There is less than a year to go. We will all speak more later on what the new Cabinet can and must do. For now, my call to Deputy Harris is this: if a general election will not be called now, as it should be, then you must commit to serving the people in a way that matters and to letting these Houses carry out our constitutional function. I am asking you to stop blocking Opposition Bills, to publish the meaningful policies we need on building homes, increasing hospital capacity, on disability rights, and welcoming refugees. Change is not easy; it takes courage. If you will not go to the people, Deputy Harris and colleagues, we hope you will act to deliver real change. We need to see that change and we need to see an Ireland that works for all.

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