Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I feel like I am flogging a dead dog with this one, but anyway, one last time with feeling, I suppose. I recall listening to an interview between Newstalk’s Kieran Cuddihy and the Tánaiste. He kind of caught him off guard by asking why he wanted to be Taoiseach. His answer was simple: "community". I always felt that the Tánaiste uses the term “community” in the John McGahern sense of the close-knit bonds of tradition, shared experience and the familiarity of your own personal hinterland that shaped you deeply. Watching the Tánaiste's career, it is apparent that the oppressive weight of Cork's expectations, its deep hurts, the poverty and the hopelessness that was seared with the Sunbeam, Ford and Dunlop closures, as well as the gossipy smallness of that conservative little city’s politics, made the Tánaiste's brand of politics. For me, this explains why he felt it was okay to leave so much of the country unrepresented at Cabinet and why a Government endowed with an unprecedented capacity to spend could patronise Cork so unfairly.

The Tánaiste might rationalise that he was just doing what the Ross O'Carroll-Kelly-types did for Dublin in the last Government. In truth, he has just reproduced the hurt felt as a young Cork politician; reproduced it in other parts of the country, particularly the borders, the west midlands and the south east. In other words, in places that do not matter to this Government. This was the dark side of community that led the Tánaiste to renege on his promise to deliver 24-7 cardiac care to University Hospital Waterford, UHW, and to the people of the south east. The Tánaiste first met me when I was a protestor campaigning for this vital service. His fully broken promise restored a seat to his party in Waterford. Watching the Tánaiste and the Government sit on its hands during confidence and supply led me to stand for the people of Waterford and to promise to fight for this and other issues. We thought that having a party with the health portfolio and with our TD installed in the Department of Health, 24-7 cardiac care would finally be realised. Perhaps the Minister thought that too when he repeatedly turned up on Damien Tiernan's local radio show, renewing the forever broken promises of extended hours that have still not happened.

As Maya Angelou wisely said, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them". The Tánaiste has shown us who he is and we have no reason not to believe.

See this speech in context