Thomas Byrne (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

With all of the praise and self-praise in which the Minister's speech is steeped, one would be forgiven for thinking Croke Park II was just a bad nightmare in the dreams of public servants, and that the proposals which the Government put forward, which were to divide union against union and to target those workers who work shift work and weekends, were all a nightmare, a dream that did not happen, and that it was not the spirit of this Government or of this Labour Party.

I sometimes wonder why the Minister is there and why we do not have Kieran Mulvey in that chair, because he is the man who has brought the unions and workers to a better position and, in my view, has shamed the Government into offering a fairer deal. It was not any politics that drove the nurses to vote against the original Croke Park II proposals by 95% to 5%; it was the sheer unfairness of it that the Government would target people who spend their nights in hospitals and who spend their weekends away from their families. Yet, the Minister comes to the House claiming all the credit for somebody who came along to clean up the mess that he created.

That is what happened.