Shane Ross (Independent)

I congratulate the Green Party on pulling the rug from under the Government on 22 November. We thought for a short period we would have an end to a Government that has outlived its purpose. One of the many farces in this episode has been that having announced the Government would end in January, the Green Party representatives said they would support the budget and the finance Bill. Now we do not know when the general election will take place because there is a game of cat and mouse going on between the Greens and Fianna Fáil at a time when the fate of the nation hangs in the balance. Fianna Fáil is dangling the prospect of a climate change Bill and Oireachtas reform, among other things, in front of the noses of Green Party Members. There is a possibility that electoral politics will keep this Government for two, three or four more months. Let nobody be in any doubt that that is the game being played.

The Green Party could have done the nation a great service by announcing that it was pulling the rug from under Fianna Fáil there and then, but it did not do this. It left the electoral timetable in limbo; in fact, it has left the nation in limbo. What is the state of the nation? What has happened to Ireland in the past few months is complete and utter humiliation, for which the responsibility rests with the Government and nobody else. Whether we like it, we are now the beggars of Europe. We are the people who went cap in hand to the IMF and the European Union, even to the Scandinavian countries and the United Kingdom, which are bailing us out. It is, psychologically and historically, a major humiliation for us. That is the state into which the Government has led us and in which it will leave us. No one overseas will lend money to Ireland.