Mattie McGrath Slams 'Musical Chairs' Government Reshuffle

I too want to wish every Minister and the Taoiseach the very, very best, as I won't be supporting them in the vote if there's a vote call, but I wish them well, personally, and as I said in the Holy Season of Lent again today, I wish them all a happy and holy peaceful Christmas to everybody in this house, staff and everybody else and families at home. Look, can I say today's announcement of the game of musical chairs where the self-interest of every government ED is prioritised, incompetence gets rewarded, not a single Minister is ever held accountable for not delivering any form of wrongdoing or wasteful spending of taxpayers' money. We look at the legacy of the children's hospital, it's an unbelievable scandal, and see children waiting for all kinds of procedures and to build it in the wrong place and to have so long, and your Taoiseach said to be built an open 2020 for I think 700-800 million or something. You knew it would never happen, but you wanted to announce the site and you did announce the site, so it's a shocking indictment, and we talked about children, you all referred to them this evening. Minister Ryan referred to the young people, with gusto taking up the TII ruling, what else will they take, they don't have the dart, bat, they don't have the lews, they don't have anything, you told them they could all live in the country with 10 cars placed in the village, they could carpool, and you've been invited by many of us down, I'm looking personally against you, you know Tipper really well, your ancestors came from there, to see the hills of Hollyford, and the hills of Killenowell, and indeed West Cork, where Deputy Collins represents Anne de Hilly Rays, I mean, just sheer inaccessibility for young people, they have to have a car, otherwise they can't go to college, they can't go to work, they can't go anywhere, and you tell them they take up with gusto, of course they will, because they take anything up. If my colleague from Waterford came along with his cargo bike, and we're good friends, and he did two or three even jump into the front of the cargo, they'd go anywhere to get somewhere, because they can't go anywhere, they're just forgotten about, our young people have been left behind in every which way, and I had two or three nurses in my office last week, getting form stamped, heading off to Australia, qualified people, young people to life ahead of them, and that's what's wrong, and as I said, I spent some time in Vincent's recently, at St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin, I got an excellent, excellent key in the public hospital, and I want to put that on record, and the vast majority of the staff were from India and elsewhere, but the nurses and all the rest, but they were just tremendous, but we're just in a brain drain and swap around, and we have cases where nurses, I have a nurse at the moment, back from Australia, qualified, and I'm making it so difficult for her, Joanna's name, to get on back registered in nursing, and we're crying out for them, and nurses ran off their feet trying to keep wards and everything else committed, and why? And she's been told if she was from the agencies from India or wherever, then nobody was straight in, she has to go through an arduous procedure, so this country is tied up in bureaucracy, and with three nice speeches there, ambitious speeches from the three new leaders, I said today this was like Lannigan's Ball, it'll be Lannigan's Wake if we're not careful for a lot of people, and all we want is the snuff, and someone to do the Quintycon, there are plenty of them here as well, or the Quintycon, as Michean Martin would know, the proper Irish spelling, and plenty of them as well, or the Green Reapers will be coming, because you're just squeezing the light blood out of people, you're not allowing them, and the Irish people are energetic, and I'm not going to knock them, they're energetic, enthusiastic, and vibrant, like their leaders were in 16, and 21, and 22, and we look forward to commemorating the leader of the Irish Republican Army, who lost his life in the lock went down mountains close to where my homestead is, and we look forward to it, but it's been embarrassment. I stood out in the backyard last week, well back, celebrating the Free State, because the issues have happened there, and they linger with me, but apart from that, we don't deserve to have the honour of celebrating, because we're not fulfilling the roles, and the aims, and objectives that they've given their lifeblood away for. I talk about colleges, you're both below colleges, such a fast, the two of you, you're kind of a hybrid, I think Eamon Ryan told you a hybrid in this, and we'll get the mic every second word, and you know, it was a fascicle, he was spinning in his grave, I'd say, because you don't represent the values, and what he gave his life for, all the Republicans, and that's my honest feeling, and that's what people are telling me, out on the street, in the laneways, and in my clinics, and they must be telling you, unless that your clues should not do it completely, or you wear the e-muffs, or you walk around with the headphones on, you don't want to meet anyone, but you'll have to meet them soon enough, and they'll be waiting in the long grass, and the grass is growing in Tipperary, Minister Ryan, and growing well. This frost now will settle back a bit, but I believe if it will come back stronger, the roots will be, and we don't need Minister Hackett, as I said earlier, not to allow us even to cut enough holly for the crib. You're talking about reinvigorating forestry. Every farmer that has a 30-year contract, and that's a long contract to wait for your money, and I've said this before, any person who plants anything, there's potatoes, which my family are renowned for, and the grass buds, animals that have beets, carrots, I'll get you some if you like, some big ones, and you know what I mean, I will close, and they're nice, a bit of butter and salt, and they're lovely. I'm just making the point that anyone who has really entered the contract for the forestry, and planted in good faith into the schemes, they have a bitter, bitter, bitter taste, and they'll never again grow a tree, or anyone belong to other neighbours, because they can't get the licence to cut. Why should they have to get a licence? You'll reap what you sow. My God, you'll reap what you sow too, and they didn't fall away either, but they'll plant the trees, they should be able to cut them, and timber factories and industries trying to train out, and the price of timber going up because we have to import it. It's a mockery that we can't cut through this, and we've got any legislation here, which I actually voted against, so my colleagues were annoyed with me, they said any legislation is better than none. That was bad legislation, it was useless, toothless, and fruitless, and it hasn't delivered, and it won't deliver. So I'm just saying to you, hospital waiting lists, the housing lists, if you had the, you know, look, we're a wealthy country, if you had, oh sorry, I'm going to press my remarks if you got permission from your masters in Europe, but if you had then had the gumption to stand up to them, and had interest in building the houses. God damn it, um, um, atonishta, they built them, and that your party was proud of working on building houses in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and the naughties when people got naughty all over the person, they wanted money, money, money, yeah, big, but when they went off and had these trucks from Art Finnan, and now they'd be, I don't know how they'd be traveling if Emma Ryan was there, but in the back of a lorry, 14 men, in the cold, and they'd know just for them sit them down to get Kenny into time, they're building schemes of houses under Fianna Fáil governments, and we've failed spectacularly to build them, and bureaucracy. Now we talk about changing planning laws. Minister Ryan is talking about, uh, uh, it was a ten percent or tenfold increase on the amount of renewables. So listen, we've had it all before. It's so far away, Minister, and I want renewables, and I want, uh, um, renewable energy, and wind energy, and, and, and, and solar energy, and wind from the wave power. When is it going to happen? I mean, it's all tied up in knots, and reams, and the mandarins, and the paddles, and your friends in Antashka, you're talking about stopping people and objecting. No mention of Antashka, the biggest quango of all. They held up a factory in County Kilginny, and the former Taoiseach did call them out on the door here one day and they replied to me, and the factory is under construction now, thank God. They had no issues with the plant, or the emissions, or anything else, but they had a fundamental idea that we had too many cows. So they stopped a plant giving 200 high-quality jobs. We were so lucky to hold on to the, to the Dutch firm, the cheese firm, you know, they were doing it. So listen, think, when you divide the cabinet up into subcommittees, and just think, and get things moving, because they're not moving. They're moving in your heads. You're moving paper from office to office, and you're back and forward, and over and header, and nothing happening. From Billy to Tom to Ned to Jack to Mary. And now you have the new whip, and I wish her well too, but look forward to work when I work with all the whips. So I don't know how hard she'll be to wave the whip, but I wish her well. And I thank Jack Chambers when he was whipped, because we cooperated on many issues. But look, if you want support, it'll be from the side of the House, but you have to have meaningful, realistic policies, not balderdash and poppy schemes like putting whatever you said to set in the south-facing windows. God, they'll be fairly well perished tonight in the south-facing windows in the last week. And I'll go back to climate change when I finish. And I'm not a climate change denier. But I said it here last week, and I'll say it again. I remember breaking ice with my sister, 40 years ago, for the cows to drink the water in the pond with a break with a sledge. So we had climate change always. So now it's all about control of the people. It's an absolute con job. You just want to frighten the people, and the poor Miss Fox and the people out there now tonight in their homes, they can't heat their homes. Foreign stations button in again, they don't know when to. Turn off and get a different dial, can't you? Dial into some Algeria or somebody that you're supporting. You were supporting Russia a few years ago. You were supporting Russia a few years ago. Thank you. Thank you. I didn't interrupt them. So I mean, look, you're controlling the people. They can't heat themselves tonight in their homes. The price of a home is heating oil, and carbon tax on top of it then. Such a time to be on carbon tax when people were under pressure anyway. And like the oil crisis, we've seen now the prices are down, thankfully, and there's a bit of relief. So there are these controls there, and you had a toolbox given to you from your masters in Europe, and you wouldn't open the damn thing and use the tools inside. So listen, I say to you, everyone's calling for election. I'm not looking for election, like Santy Claus voting for Christmas, but I don't believe you're Santy Claus because first of all, we can't get the holly for the crib, and I know what you'd have in the little presents under the Christmas tree. They'd be very scarce, and busk, busk full of, I say, inside. It would have been a wrapping paper. Mightn't even be Christmas style. Go raibh maith gud.