Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the staff of the Oireachtas, who have always facilitated all of us at any time that we needed everything. We would like to wish them all a happy Christmas.

Now that all the niceties are over, we will go away and most of us will have a comfortable, warm, happy Christmas in our homes. It would be wrong to let the day go by without thinking of those who do not have a home, who will spend Christmas in hotels, hostels or on trolleys in hospitals. It is an awful time of the year. It always baffles me that we get so excited and concerned at Christmas when this is happening year-round. I see people in this Chamber and elsewhere stand up to talk about how they would fix the system and such. I was in the regional hospital in Galway when I was ten and my bed was in the middle of a ward because it had no beds. The staff were putting beds in the middle of wards and putting people on trolleys. That was in the 1960s. Nothing has changed over the years. I know of no fix that will make the world a better place without everybody pulling in one direction. Cheap shots at one another, especially in the areas of health and education, will never solve the problem. The problem requires all of us to put all of our shoulders to the wheel.

Today, we might think of those who we have let down badly. This country has become a very wealthy country again. People are coming back from Helsinki, from an EU meeting. I was amazed at the number of children who were on the flight, having flown to Helsinki to see Santa. I was thinking about the children who were walking the streets of Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford because they had to leave the hotel at 12 o'clock in the morning. There is a lot of inequality. I know we are coming to the end of the lifetime of this Government. Whatever Government comes in, that inequality has to be tackled. I do not know that there is a way to solve it in the current political system but my thoughts are with those people today.