Speeches: 14 April 2026

Comhairle, Labour has no confidence in this government.

So price controls is what is needed and I don't know why you set your face against it because when it comes to handouts as we saw on the budget to big business on R&D tax credits or for example a billion euro last year in excise cuts to the aviation industry to a few very very profitable airlines how can you give it to the big corporate sector but you won't give it to ordinary people who are being crushed with a cost-of-living crisis.

I seriously concern that you are actually just trying to remove climate obligations through the back door and that your over-reliance or prioritisation of private developers' interests mean it'll be them who benefit from it rather than the public interest.

It's your priorities that are the problem.

They were right to protest, protest works and we need more protests.

The GP shortages are putting rural patients at risk and that's an important call and I'm saying that here and now in the record of this house.

You don't have the right to destroy someone else's life.

Events that seem so far away geographically have a very immediate impact on everyday costs for people from food to fuel, the very basics.

I rise to support the motion of confidence in this government and the accumulated package of three quarters of a billion euro of an intervention to support citizens right across our country.

It is important that this happens at the earliest opportunity, supersedes all other business, so that the Dáil has the opportunity to express its confidence in the government and gets on with the important business.

Our language and our words matter.

This government's political choices have failed to protect people from exactly this kind of price shock.

I not just have confidence in this government, more importantly I have confidence in our country and I have confidence in the people of the country.

If the opposition succeed in their aim to put this government out of business, those 775 million of supports will be not in place for the people of Ireland.

We have to keep our people's lights on without dependence from abroad and without the price shocks that we have seen from the actions of totally unpredictable players.

This government has failed and you've lost the trust of the people.

The sum of the actions in the last week at blockading critical infrastructure, restricting free movement of people, disrupting critical supply chains and threatening our Garda Síochána is reckless, irresponsible and deeply concerning for our society.

If we lose the social contract with the people, then what that looks like is Capitol Hill and what that looks like is what's taking place out front of this house this evening.

You refused to speak with them.

Minister, as I speak here this evening, I'm conscious of how deeply disappointed many people from across this country are that this do-nothing government is still in place.

Rural Ireland cannot reach its full potential if its infrastructures continue to lag behind.

We have an absolute obligation on behalf of the workers and the disabled to question why you have not brought forward one single measure to deal with the suffering people are feeling.

The blockade of vital national resources is not a protest. It is an act of thuggery

Sinn Féin are seeking to collapse this government because they think they can benefit from chaos.

I pledged to them that I would have their back I told them that I would fight their corner and I'm not going to let them down and that's exactly what we're doing here today

It is a holding operation designed to contain the anger, not solve the problem.

So it wasn't really a surprise to me at the weekend, as we worked through Easter, and again this weekend, in trying to develop a package of supports to assist them through the most difficult time, that Sinn Féin, early on Sunday, decided to put down a motion of no confidence in the government, before a package of measures were even announced.

You have in no way heard the message that came from the people of Ireland, a message that they couldn't have given yas any louder or any clearer.

For people right around the country that's using home heat and oil, there is nothing there.

If we continue with the Habitats Directive in its present form, it's God help any Minister to be honest about it, because the rigmarole you have to go through.

The night that the first measures were announced here, a blind man would know that when you could buy white diesel within three cents of green diesel, the writing was on the wall.

The government needs to support ordinary families in this country. Genuinely needs to support, not just the ones that get up at 4am in the morning and get up at 6 o'clock in the morning.

In these challenging times, responsible, stable and measured government is what is required.

Your choices during the last budget favoured wealthy developers, left vulnerable people in the lurch, and your lack of urgency on the need to ramp up our energy security has been frustrating.

In other words this no confidence motion is just another one of their stunts and in the cold light of day people know that.

You can never, in my view, make your point to the detriment of someone else's wellbeing.

I'm saying to give it back at the pumps.

And it went from bad to worse when a minister gave 40 million again to Ukraine in the middle of it.

Because of the fact that I believe this government have left the people of Ireland down, I will be voting no confidence in the leader of the country and I will be tendering my resignation as a Minister of State from now.

We need a stable government right now to bring in the financial supports that we brought in tonight and that's something that wasn't relayed to the public.

It is my job to fight for and defend agriculture in the best interests of our farmers, our fishers and our agri-food sector and because of its importance to our overall economy and in particular our rural economy.

This insane directionalist policy has been sleepwalking us into fatal vulnerability.

The tools to ease the crisis exist, please use them.

Everybody needs to be a first or you fail, and that's the problem.

We have to take sustainable steps, repeatable steps that support everything that we need to do.

That is not leadership, that is provocation, and it is deeply wrong.

so in practice it does represent a major shift towards speed and centralized coordination in infrastructure delivery but there are certainly major concerns with this bill

Sinn Féin are the most hollow, cynical and destructive political impostors I have ever, or this state has ever witnessed.

Arrogance and entitlement seems to be the mentality here of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

Nobody has the right to prevent people from getting to cancer treatment, to be visited by their carer, to distribute vital supplies.

Ireland, as a government, we've responded more sustainably than most governments across Europe, and we will continue, obviously, to keep the broader economic situation under review to support vital sectors that keep jobs going and keep the economy going itself.

Your time is up. And let's be honest, all of this didn't start last week.

The partial closure and blockading of the Strait of Hormuz has had immediate and far-reaching consequences, sending shockwaves through global markets and, as we all know, it is directly impacting families and businesses here in Ireland.

You limped through shedding some of your own along the way and people will draw their own conclusions about the motivations behind those changes of heart.

This government cannot be trusted on infrastructure delivery.

It is not satisfactory that any agency or body of the state would come before any committee of the Oireachtas without having figures to hand.

I have no confidence in this Government.

The government did introduce a package aimed at easing the impact of the cost of living increases with cuts to excise on fuel and further supports for those to get their fuel allowance.

The alternative is to have price controls to give people security to stop profiteering to let people know that this is going to be the price that's what we need to do.

Don't trust these fake independents.

Not once did they criticise the blockades which cause such misery to people across this country and their response today is to table a no confidence motion in a government which is working hard every day to deliver on commitments that we've made to the Irish people.

I stand with the ordinary people [...] of Ireland who have absolutely no confidence in government.

You have neglected the working people of this country, you have squandered Irish taxpayers money and when they want some of their own money back they have to come kicking, begging and screaming for their own money and for assistance.

It behoves all of us to do everything we can to protect our citizens and our businesses, and the vulnerable, as best we can.

Taoiseach, why will you not take questions from TDs and from party leaders in the Dáil today?

The right to protest is not unlimited.

If I had to do it all over again tomorrow, I'd be with them because they're the real people of Ireland.

This government has left down those in Plantar, it has left down those farmers, it has left down taxi drivers, it has left down the hauliers, it has left down contractors and fishermen, and it has left down the ordinary people, the ordinary people that this government say they represent and that they say they live amongst.

The Green Party has no confidence in this government and I'll vote against it.

You survived today but you will not survive into the future because we need to see real government that delivers for people because what we've seen to date is failure, failure to listen and failure to act in real terms.

It's utterly unacceptable after three weeks that the Taoiseach is not having leaders' questions, Taoiseach's questions, QPL, when we need scrutiny more than ever, given what we've had over the last week.

Instead of listening and working towards solutions with people, you're threatening them.

These are low and middle income families being crucified and they don't get fuel allowance, not entitled to fuel allowance, so they're left out.

This isn't good enough Minister and I don't see this bill addressing any of that.

Ireland needs to join that and use that money to bring in relief for people.

We have to remember that budgets are limits and not targets [...] it has to be done in a balanced manner and with a view to evolving needs.

You can only tailor a tax on the basis of where the economy is at and where people's pockets are at and this particular tax ignores all of that and that's why it's so problematic.

There is no magic money tree out there.

We've seen people die from suicide in Donegal with defective concrete, they don't give a damn about us, they have left us and abandoned us for years and years.

It's simply despicable and the people of this country deserve better and the people of this country deserve a government that listens to them and truly values them.