Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to be here for this very important debate. I support this motion because the people are totally annoyed with what the Government is doing. None of the Government parties - Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael or the Green Party - campaigned at the last general election to end neutrality or the triple lock and, therefore, they have no mandate for any such policies. I ask them to hold a referendum and to tell the people the truth this time. The Tánaist, who is at the front of this removal of the triple lock, said in 2013 that the triple lock was the core of our neutrality and described the attempt to undermine it as "an out-of-touch ideological obsession on the part of Fine Gael". Now Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Greens are joined together to do exactly what he said should not be done. Who can believe what they are saying? I have had a lot of respect for the Minister of State over the years, but this is totally ridiculous. We do not even have a properly resourced Army. A lot of the time, Defence Forces members have to get the working family payment to survive. We could not keep out the dogs and cats if a right invasion of them landed. That is the absolute truth. The Defence Forces are doing great peacekeeping work all over the world, and we really admire them for what they have done, but we should not be forced by Europe to go into this kind of a situation when we do not have an Army.

We applaud de Valera for what he did in the middle of the Second World War, when he stood up to Churchill and refused to go into an arrangement with him at that time. De Valera held his neutrality, and we applaud him for that. The Government parties should hold a referendum because the people do not trust them. They should tell the truth to them this time, not like what they did in the most recent referendums. They told them many blatant lies, but the people read it, even though all the Opposition parties here were combined in this. Look at all the things the Government parties have done to the people: carbon tax, the climate action Bill, the hate speech Bill, the nature restoration laws that they are going to implement and that their MEPs in Europe have voted for, and the nitrates directive. Many small farmers have to reduce the number of their cows. Water quality is important, but it must be recognised that something has to be done about our treatment plants as well because many of them are under capacity and some settlements have no treatment plant.

The Government's migration policy is a total and absolute shambles. The whole of the western world is laughing at the Government. One arm of the government is giving out tents and another arm is coming along and dumping them the following day along the canal. The Government parties have diluted the tourism product of Kerry and Killarney. Businesses are struggling over what they have done, and the social fabric of Killarney is totally changed by their migration policy because they have no policy, only to take as many as they can, with no cap and no idea of where they are going or where they will finish up. They are hurting and angering a great many people and they have it done already.

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