Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

With the greatest of respect to the Taoiseach, whatever it was he said on Monday did not work because the industrial action started at one minute past midnight today. As the Minister rightly said, people are facing into a chaotic summer now. They have spent all year working hard, they have spent all this time saving up and they are looking in now. The Minister tells me her heart goes out to them, and mine does too, but I put a fairly simple question to her, namely, what is her Government prepared to do? She said in her response the Government is doing everything it can. Is the Minister telling me genuinely that everything it can do amounts simply to her saying her heart goes out to them? People would like to see some decisive action from the Government. They are looking for leadership from the Government and want to see a high-level intervention. As I said in my opening remarks, this is not a run-of-the-mill dispute. It is not an ordinary, common-or-garden industrial relations dispute. It is a dispute that threatens connectivity and that is why it is a matter for the Government. People do not want to hear sympathetic words. They want to know what it is the Minister and her Government are prepared to do to help them.

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