Deputy Mary Lou McDonald- speech from 22 Jan 2025

Politics, power and a bit of drama right here in the Doyle. Like, subscribe and see it all unfold. It is astonishing after weeks and weeks of haggling amongst the parties that propose to form government over who would get which job and how much they could increase the respective allowances for their record number of junior ministers. We find ourselves meeting on the first day of the Doyle and the first action of government is to propose a further two-week holiday. This is unacceptable. We all know the big issues that face people out on the ground and the message needs to be to government, get to work. There is no rationale, no excuse and no reason for further delay and for this two-week holiday. Secondly, the speaking arrangements outlined or proposed by the government whip underscore again a ruse, a cynical and unprecedented ruse from Fianna Fall and Fine Gael to place their independent cronies, supporters of the government, on the opposition benches, and to afford to them the same speaking rights as genuine parties of opposition who, remember, are elected here by hundreds of thousands of voters to keep this government to account, to express the democratic wishes and desires of those people and communities. I have seen brazen actions by Fianna Fall and Fine Gael in past Dáil and in past governments, but this takes the biscuit. I believe that rather than agreeing to temporary measures which afford these government TDs speaking rights as though there were members of the opposition, that this should have been called out from the get-go. You say that you will be independent and fair in your deliberations. What is proposed today is anything but fair, anything but independent, and is completely unacceptable to those of us in Sinn Féin and I believe to the opposition as a whole. Hear, hear, hear. Hear. Hear. Hear. Hear.