Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)

Hat-trick. I am doing a Troy Parrott.

On a serious note, insecurity and instability now lie at the heart of the financial engine of the State and at the heart of this Government in general. That matters because a government that lacks stability cannot offer hope. All of us feel the need for hope among the people and the communities we represent - people who feel the reality of the housing crisis or the sharp end of the cost-of-living crisis, people with less money in their bank accounts at the end of the week or the month, with grocery and energy bills, insurance, rent and mortgage costs rising. Thousands of families are being driven into debt. Another generation of young adults face emigration. Thousands of children are on waiting lists. Some 300,000 households are in arrears on electricity bills.

This is a Government of failure that has no answers. It had no answers from its inception and it has no answers now. A lastminute.com change of personnel does not provide new answers. The Government is a conservative coalition cobbled together in three parts: two Civil War enemies, uneasily united and relics of a bygone era, with a third leg made up of the so-called Independents, the western alliance, and a Lowry leg of this wobbly stool uneasily united by Deputy Michael Lowry, a man found to be corrupt by a tribunal who literally gave two fingers to the Dáil. This reshuffle brings back all those rather bad memories for all of us of that unedifying spectacle.

The Government represents the politics of the past, which cannot offer hope to hard-pressed households. We saw that in the October budget, which was a gift to burger barons and big builders, as Deputy Nash said, with reckless tax cuts, massive giveaways to corporate chains and nothing for working families. We need an alternative politics that delivers massive State-led investment. The Labour Party mission is for an active State. That is why we believe we need a left-led Government. We saw a real appetite for that sort of alternative politics and alternative Ireland in the landslide win, just two and a half weeks ago, by Catherine Connolly in the presidential election. In her campaign, she united the parties of the left and other parties comprising people who see the need for an alternative vision and for an active State that can provide for those in need, that can build homes, tackle the cost-of-living crisis and provide public services and those climate action measures that seem to have slipped off this Government's agenda but are so patently necessary to secure the future for our children and grandchildren.

This resignation takes place at a very challenging time. There is ongoing uncertainty with Trump's tariffs and trade tantrums, and a winter of rising bills and stagnating wages ahead of us. That is why we need a strong and secure programme for change, a programme that will guarantee greater security to households and secure lives and livelihoods. Changing the names on the doors in Government Buildings will not provide that security or hope for the future. The Taoiseach's coalition, it seems, will continue to govern with an approach that smacks of more of the same. Maybe the Minister, Deputy McEntee, will finally pass the occupied territories Bill in full by Christmas, as we in opposition have been pressing for the Government to do. Maybe the Minister, Deputy Naughton, will address the scandal of the thousands of children waiting for assessments of need and for school places, the lack of places for autism services and all of those issues that Cara Darmody and others have been bringing up so frequently.

What we saw last week in the housing plan was more of the same. It is a so-called new housing plan that was nothing more than old milk in new bottles and so little hope for those locked out of homeownership. A locked-out generation is being told to hang in there at the same time they see annual housing targets simply removed from the plan and at a time we see 5,000 children in homelessness, which is a national disgrace.

We need more than a change of personnel. We need a change of government. We need a left-led government because only such a government can deliver the hope and security families, households and communities around the country so badly need and are so badly looking for. We wish the individual Ministers well in their new roles but we cannot have hope they will offer any sort of security for the future with their Government.

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