Martin, Micheál

Business of Dáil (Continued)

When the Opposition tables a motion of no confidence in the Government, there is always a precedent for the Government to respond by way of a motion of affirmation or confidence in itself. However...

I do not know. I am making the point.

We are meant to be experiencing a democratic revolution and this is all meant to be changed. Having Leaders Questions, for example-----

I would trade any time on my record in the Dáil or in committees as a Minister answering questions. I would do that any time.

I never had any difficulty in that regard. We are having Leaders Questions at 5.30 p.m. The Order of Business will be at 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. tonight.

That will be after spending six hours in here.

Does it not strike anybody as being a bit absurd or ludicrous? Business will be ordered after it has already been ordered and having had questions on it.

Not at 7 p.m. and after a debate.

A more sensible approach would have been to have the Order of Business and Leaders Questions now, with the confidence debate afterwards for three or four hours. It brings the Dáil into disrepute t...

That would have made more sense. Recent late-night debates have not been very good value for the Dáil in terms of public image, so we need some cop-on and common sense. That is why I object to th...

Note the language. They are "giving" them three hours. That is instructive.

That was brilliant.

Voted Yes

Voted No

Confidence in Taoiseach and Government: Motion (Continued)

Hear, hear.

Reflecting on the debate and the speeches we have just heard, I would like to remark that the great phrase, "Frankfurt's way or Labour's way", does not sound too dissimilar to "Europ...

No, it is not. It is on foot of what I have just heard. In many respects, the debate is a perfect illustration of why the people have for a long time and in ever greater numbers lost confidence i...

Time and again, major problems have been allowed to develop directly because of Government policies and have only been addressed when there has been a massive public backlash. The Taoiseach has ...

Yet again we have heard the fairy-tale story of a selfless Government which came to office and turned everything around and only has problems because of how hard it has been working on our behalf...

This is a story which is as dishonest as it is discredited.

In its nearly four years in office the Government has never produced a plan for the economic and social development of our country. In fact its very first decision as a coalition was not to nego...

Earlier the Taoiseach attacked people who opposed the plan. No one opposed the plan more persistently and consistently than the Taoiseach himself, the previous Tánaiste and the current Tánaiste. ...

As every independent study has shown, the budgets introduced by my late colleague, Brian Lenihan, were ones where the wealthiest bore the biggest burden. As every independent study has also conf...

From day one, the Government has put politics before substance. It has seen every problem in terms of how to spin it. After an enormous defeat in May’s local elections, after rising discontent on...

This debate has been framed as a new start, the moment when the Government gets its act together and starts communicating its message. The Taoiseach set it off yesterday with his launch of Fine ...

It is important to note that the Labour Party fully shares this commitment to selective and dishonest spin. This week it too has launched a post-budget offensive, with a claim that nearly 1.2 mi...

It is true that fiscal consolidation has been important and unavoidable. Those parties which like to pretend that all hard decisions could have been avoided are as dishonest as those who pretend t...

Unsurprisingly, the Taoiseach has found no room to acknowledge how European policies negotiated by others and automatically extended to Ireland gave him billions towards achieving targets.

Deputy Reilly was removed from the health portfolio because of his miserable failures in the Department. That is why the Taoiseach did that to him.

With the greatest of respect, he is the last person in Cabinet who should open his mouth today because he is the personification of why people have lost confidence in the Government.

It is the skills and hard work of the people that have helped our economy, not the short-term, damaging and divisive policies of the Government. These skills were built up over decades, and the ar...

This week there will once again be major demonstrations over the deeply unfair water charge and the manner in which it was implemented. As the Minister, Deputy Noonan, apparently confirmed in an...

The Minister, Deputy Coveney, knows all about it because he conceived it.

The usage-based charge was defended by the party from the very start in the NewERA document. We have ended up with a situation where a charge is being imposed to fund meters which are pointless, t...

This was a defining issue in May, whether the Government likes it or not. The Taoiseach said he understood the message loud and clear. The Cabinet spent four months preparing a final answer, whic...

If things keep going as they are, we will end up with a huge hole in the national budget and people will be paying for declining investment in water services.

This increasingly chaotic approach to policy, where ministerial actions ignore and make major problems worse, has been seen in nearly every Department and there is no reason to believe it will end ...

At local level, the Tánaiste's party in Dublin, with Fine Gael support, earlier this year tried to cut homeless services until forced to retreat by our councillors.

  I welcome t...

-----but this will be merely a sticking plaster if the more serious policy mistake of cutting housing benefit and rent supplement is not reversed. Unfortunately, we have heard nothing from the Gov...

This shows itself in the reality of what has been happening. There has been a sustained withdrawal of State support for marginalised communities and drugs have been seen as only important as a pub...

In health, yet again claims of adequate funding have fallen apart within days. The damage done in three years of failed policies has not been reversed. At best the rate of decline will be maint...

In education, schools face a growing funding crisis, with those who serve poorer communities suffering disproportionately. Protests are being made by communities throughout the country as they s...

The approach of trying to implement policy without discussion or review led directly to last week’s second-level school strikes and is part of a wider problem of refusing to engage with public serv...

The pattern of neglecting problems and allowing them to become crises has also shown itself regarding Northern Ireland. When Fianna Fáil pointed out the collapsing public confidence in the behav...

The failure of the Government to implement even one significant reform of politics and government confirms how it mainly cares about retaining power. Appointing an advisory group on the Seanad w...

The Taoiseach must bear responsibility for the growing crisis in his Government and the collapse of public trust in it. He busies himself with photo opportunities-----

-----and brief comments but has been the least accessible Taoiseach of modern times when it comes to detailed interviews or debates.

He simply will not participate in them. He retreats behind over-written political attacks and empty claims instead of directly engaging with opponents or the people he is here to serve.

Tá easpa físe i gcroílár an Rialtais seo agus ó thaobh na Gaeilge de, is léir nach bhfuil an Rialtas i ndáiríre. Sin é an fáth a d'éirigh an iar-Choimisinéir Teanga as oifig, de bharr an easpa o...

The Government had the opportunity to set a vision for a country that treats its younger and older citizens decently and to build a recovery felt by all. Instead it has caused deepened divisions...

The people have shown that they have no confidence in the Government to address their concerns and the needs of our country. Dáil Éireann should also have no confidence in a tired, arrogant and ...

Voted No

Leaders' Questions

Last week, there was a special "Prime Time" programme on the ambulance service. It monitored various counties and also looked at ambulance response times in Dublin. The programme was shocking as ...

For example, one man explained how he rang 999 as his father had chest pain. Even though they could see the Wexford hospital from their own home, the ambulance took more than 50 minutes to arriv...

A whistleblower from the mid-west was interviewed. She said that ambulance crews from the mid-west were run ragged and "going without food for hours" trying to respond to patients because of a l...

The Health Information and Quality Authority report published last week confirmed that ambulance calls continue to rise by about 10% per year.

Worryingly, it also found that staffing in some control centres fell below the required safe levels.

Does the Taoiseach accept that ambulance response times are far from acceptable? What does he intend to do to address this situation? Does he accept that it is time for a fundamental review of ...

The Taoiseach needs to stop referring to things happening "for the first time" because that is the classical political response to very serious issues. The HIQA report was quite clear that over a ...

The key point is that the lack of any strategic planning is now evident. Something has gone fundamentally wrong with the reconfiguration. What is the response to that person in Wexford who was ...

-----that up to 47 vehicles were way beyond the seven years and 500,000 km criteria for emergency ambulances in the State.

Leaders' Questions (Continued)

They had long passed those criteria and still had not been replaced and will not be until next year. We welcome that fact, but it is too late and shows a lack of proactivity. The report, which ba...

It also strongly criticises the issue of ambulance capacity being lost due to the delay in handing over to accident and emergency departments. It is not just a question of saying that it is far fr...

-----in terms of the reconfiguration and the move to centralisation. Would the Taoiseach accept that something has gone wrong concerning people's access to ambulances and the response times.

But it is the public sector that should have them.

Economic Management Council Meetings

Asked the Taoiseach: if the Economic Management Council has met recently.

Asked the Taoiseach: the position regarding the Economic Management Council.

Asked the Taoiseach: the position regarding the status of the Economic Management Council; and if he will make a statement on the matter.

The Taoiseach did not answers Questions Nos. 3 and 6, which I tabled and which basically asked him to make a statement on the position regarding the Economic Management Council and the position reg...

The reason I put the questions in that form was that I was amused by the Minister of State, Deputy Alex White, who on "The Week in Politics" programme articulated the view that there woul...

Economic Management Council Meetings (Continued)

The danger and incompetence of the Economic Management Council, EMC, were demonstrated by its railroading through and rubberstamping of the expenditure on water meters and Irish Water, without prop...

There are many more. The dishonest budget last year on health, for example, was the child of the EMC. It did the work on the budget and presented it to Cabinet. That was presented in the House...

There is a fundamental lack of constitutionality that Ministers are excluded from its work and four people make key decisions with officials who are not elected. A Cabinet is elected and appoint...

I am amazed this has got so little attention. No one knows anything about the signing off of that €500 million which was allegedly off balance sheet because it came from the strategic investment...

The Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy White, said he was unhappy with the Economic Management Council, that he understood it would be subject to review and that th...

Irish Water should be abolished.

That is not true.

This is more of the Taoiseach's dishonesty.

That is not true.

No. Fine Gael voted for it.

What about the October Paris statement?

The Taoiseach is a hypocrite.

He voted for the bank guarantee.

The Taoiseach voted for it as Leader of the Opposition.

It borders on the unbelievable.

I think the bank guarantee was the right thing to do, by the way. It had to be done.

The Taoiseach thinks the same.

That is not going to happen. They do not determine leaks.

The Taoiseach is not listening.

They have told me the opposite.

Stop the raiméis.

This has nothing to do with it.

Stop.

The Taoiseach is taking the people for fools.

The Taoiseach has not told anybody that.

He has told no one anything.

Those plans are there anyway.

That is an understatement

No, I did not. The Economic Management Council voted for that money.

The Economic Management Council took the decisions on water.

They cannot even read them.

It is true.

Other technicalities are associated with domestic meters.

So when one becomes Tánaiste, one becomes supportive of it.

I put three questions to the Taoiseach in respect of the Economic Management Council. He dismissed any concerns relating to the EMC. However, it was the Tánaiste, Deputy Burton, who first articul...

The Taoiseach might say that there are 19 or 20 items on the agenda at any Cabinet meeting. Many of these might relate to appointments to State boards or the adoption of the reports of semi-Stat...

The Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and many of the other Deputies opposite voted against the measures introduced by the previous Government but they are now claiming credit for them. They are also claimi...

The rationale put forward by the Taoiseach in respect of the establishment of the Economic Management Council does not hold water. Deputy Higgins made an extremely important point to which the T...

I do not believe he rang from a telephone kiosk, but he rang and said a bomb would go off. He said it would not go off in Frankfurt, but in Dublin, if any attempt was made to burn bondholders. Th...

With regard to the bank guarantee, the Taoiseach keeps making charges. He voted for the bank guarantee and told the then Minister for Finance to do whatever it takes. He carries on as if he did...

My view is that a guarantee was required at the time in question. It has been renewed by the present Government. The Taoiseach is on public record as accepting the position on bondholders was ...

With regard to Irish Water, Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett is correct in so far as the Government now has to invent reasons to justify the expenditure of €500 million on water meters. The Taoiseach...

The Taoiseach mentioned plans. There were lots of plans and more than €500 million was spent on water infrastructure. In my city, the main drainage project was built and this involved massive i...

To suggest, as the Taoiseach has done in his reply, that the EMC is just a mere Cabinet committee is to give a dishonest portrayal of what the EMC really is. The EMC calls the shots in this Gove...

The Taoiseach did not respond to my point on the health service. The former Minister for Health, Deputy James Reilly, was told to accept the medical card probity figure. That is what caused the...

Unprecedentedly and incredibly, the former Minister for Health came into the House on budget day and announced the figure was not accurate or real and that he did not come up with it. He said he...

I remind the Taoiseach that his Cabinet colleagues were the first to raise the undemocratic nature of the EMC, and they were protesting loudly behind his back to anybody who would listen over the...

Order of Business (Continued)

My party is not agreeing to the late sitting. It is appalling and farcical what is going on. I genuinely say that. There is no need for this. We are debating the order of today's business at 7....

It is farcical.

It would not happen in any organisation.

That is not the reason.

It is not the reason. We could have had the motion of confidence and the Private Members' motion, and that would be that. There is no need for this.

It is just an awful ramshackle, ham-fisted-----

It is a ham-fisted, ridiculous and farcical way of ordering the business of this House. I would ask the Taoiseach to postpone No. 31, for example, which is to be debated for just one hour before a...

2 o'clock? Have we lost our marbles in this House completely?

Has the Taoiseach not learned anything from the last occasion when we-----

One second, a Cheann Comhairle; this is important - when we went beyond midnight-----

-----and how that disgraced the House and the public perception of the House? The Taoiseach is now going to say, as people prepare to march, that we will bury the water issue to the middle of the ...

All Deputies, when we meet in corridors, will ask each other-----

-----what we are doing here.

Who will be listening at midnight-----

-----or 1 a.m. to us debating issues like this? It is unacceptable.

Am I in a position to table an amendment?

I ask the Taoiseach-----

Instead of keeping on saying no, I am asking the Taoiseach sincerely. This is ridiculous. The debate on Committee Stage will adjourn, which means it can be continued again. We are talking about ...

-----and we could do it on another occasion.

We have no problem with that.

I am sorry, a Cheann Comhairle, this is clear-cut.

The Taoiseach-----

Hold on a second, a Cheann Comhairle. The Taoiseach's response has been ignorant, arrogant, dismissive and despicable.

With the greatest respect, a Cheann Comhairle, there should be respect shown to this House. What the Taoiseach just did is an absolute disgrace.

There is no question of anybody not wanting to debate something here-----

-----but there is an issue about the order of this House, and going past midnight is an absolute joke.

I am showing it correctly. With the greatest of respect, I have never initiated the kind of behaviour that others have in this House, but this is going a step too far.

To get that glib, arrogant, ignorant response from the Taoiseach is unacceptable.

On No. 15, if I could get clarification, what Departments are involved there?

A speech made in the House last Wednesday on a serious issue and material that was disseminated, individually, to members of the Committee of Public Accounts. I wish to invoke Standing Order 59. ...

I ask the Taoiseach as well the status of the documentation and material that the authorised officer has disclosed to 13 members of the Committee of Public Accounts in terms of the Department of ...

There is comprehensive and extensive documentation on this issue within the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation.

Comprehensive material going back a number of years is available and the members of the Committee of Public Accounts have not had access to it. All of the material was sent to the Garda fraud squa...

It is a bit late now.

No, it is not. Deputy Buttimer got stitched up by his own side.

Water Services Bill 2014: Second Stage (Resumed) (Continued)

Voted No

Garda Misconduct Allegations

Asked the Minister for Justice and Equality: if she has received correspondence in respect of a person (details supplied) in County Down; if their serious allegations were sent to the panel of barristers; when they may expect an outcome; and ...

Commemorative Events

Asked the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht: the commitment in the programme for Government relating to the cultural plan for future commemorative events such as the centenary of the Easter 1916 Rising; and if she will make a statement on the...

Asked the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht: the involvement of officials in her Department on the proposals for the development of Moore Street for the commemoration of 1916; and if she will make a statement on the matter.