Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Fine Gael is putting a brave face on today's events, but the real background to the ascension to office of Deputy Simon Harris is an outgoing Taoiseach and one-third of sitting Fine Gael TDs abandoning the Fine Gael ship and being afraid to face the electorate at the next general election. The reason they are abandoning the Fine Gael ship and do not want to face the electorate is because they know they have failed hundreds of thousands of people on the most basic things, namely providing secure and affordable housing, providing a decent health service that works, protecting our children with special needs and those with disabilities, providing the public services that make life bearable and protecting people from the crippling cost-of-living crisis that has been inflicted on them over the past number of years.

I find it particularly remarkable that the outgoing Taoiseach has attempted to absolve himself of these failures and the reasons he is abandoning ship by making reference to the international origins of the problems we face.

That is quite extraordinary.

The reality is that ours is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. The profits of corporations here have gone through the roof in the period during which Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have been in government. Those profits have almost quadrupled since 2011. In a wealthy country where profits are being raked in by corporations, energy companies, corporate landlords and vulture funds, the Government has left us with the worst housing and homelessness crisis the country has ever seen. That crisis continues to get worse day in, day out. It is shameful that 4,000 children are in homeless accommodation and that their numbers continue to rise. It is absolutely shameful that in a country as wealthy as ours, a generation of young and working people are priced out of the possibility of ever owning their own home. Many of them cannot pay the utterly unaffordable rents being charged, and we are seeing the return of mass emigration. Young people coming out of the universities and colleges Simon Harris has been charge of are leaving because they do not believe - they have no confidence - that this Government is capable of giving them a secure and affordable roof over their heads. The skills and talents they have developed are being taken elsewhere, to other countries, because they believe there is no future for them.

The outgoing Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, referred to the cost-of-living crisis and stated that the worst is over. He should tell that to people who got their electricity and gas bills in the early months of this year. Those bills were absolutely crucifying. The same is true of mortgage interest rate hikes that have seen people's mortgage repayments go up by hundreds of euro every month. For many, they are absolutely unsustainable. Likewise, of course, there is the profiteering of rents, which in Dublin are now between €2,000 and €2,500 a month. It is extraordinary. Spending €24,000 or €30,000 a year of after-tax income on rent is unaffordable for the vast majority of working people.

There was a reference to special needs. All I am hearing about at the moment in my clinic, and I have heard it around the Dáil over recent weeks, are children who cannot get appointments with the children's disability network teams, which are chronically understaffed, or with the completely under-resourced and understaffed child and adolescent mental health services teams, and about schools that are seeing cuts to special education teaching resources or cannot get funding for the autism classes they are looking for. There is the failure to ratify the optional protocol for people with disabilities and the shocking fact that rather than people with disabilities and carers being given rights, they are means-tested and are often denied the supports and rights they deserve.

I found it particularly shocking that at its Ard-Fheis at the weekend, there were references to Fine Gael going back to core values and back to basics. That should be a reason for people to be scared, because Fine Gael's core values over the past ten years have been to back corporations, landlords and vulture funds while working people get it in the neck, while Fine Gael cannot deliver affordable housing for people and while our health service is crumbling.

See this speech in context