Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I was delighted to attend, with some of my colleagues from the Dáil, the momentous and historic occasion last Saturday when Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill was elected First Minister with the DUP’s Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly. With many others, I witnessed first-hand epoch-making events. It was a day like no other in Ireland’s long and conflicted history; a day of great hope for the people of Ireland and of great opportunity for a new beginning. It was a great day for the Good Friday Agreement and its all Ireland and east-west institutions; a great day for reconciliation between the nationalist and unionist people and others of no declared aspiration. It was a great opportunity for local politicians to bring their collective skills to bear to resolve the many social and economic problems that people of the North are experiencing, in a similar way to the elected representatives in this Chamber and the Dáil on behalf of the people who elect us.

Last Saturday, the framework of the Good Friday Agreement had new democratic life breathed into it in the Assembly’s Chamber when the mandate of the people was respected and a Government was elected to work in conjunction with the Irish Government in the exercise of its duties across Ireland and between Ireland and Britain. With an eye to our tragic past, Michelle O’Neill’s election was a moment which was not supposed to happen because of Britain’s partition of Ireland and the system of injustice and discrimination that maintained the unionist state but far-reaching change is now rooted among the people of the North. I look forward to seeing all the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement operating in full and, alongside this work, Sinn Féin and the SDLP will continue to campaign for constitutional change and a referendum North and South to peacefully bring about a unified and independent Ireland, a referendum which is a pillar of the Good Friday Agreement. I call for a debate on how we can best support the important work of the Assembly.

The second issue I wish to raise is one that I must have risen to bring up 100 times by now, namely the continued and abject failure of this Government when it comes to University Hospital Limerick. I would not have believed that we could reach the stage we did yesterday with 150 patients languishing on trolleys. The record of failure is consistent and it gets worse year after year, month after month, and I hold Stephen Donnelly wholly responsible for this. This is a Minister who denies the INMO figures and has done so in this Chamber. He is in denial about the state of failure across University Hospital Limerick and we are losing lives as a result of this failure. He has had four years to actually implement measures. Even today, if you ask the Government what is its plan to deal with this crisis, it simply does not have one. I am calling, as I have done before, for an emergency debate on University Hospital Limerick. I hope I have the support of everyone in this Chamber for that debate given how appalling the circumstances are. I want to call here, publicly, for Stephen Donnelly to resign. He has failed and failed the people in Limerick and the mid west in the most abject manner.