Bríd Smith calls to end 100 years of Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael

I'm going to be here, but I'm going to be here for a new year. I'm going to be here for the next year. I'm going to be here for the next week. I'm going to be here for 30 years. I'm going to be here for the Council of Hazel Dunorth. I do want to say a huge thanks to the staff. They're incredibly generous with their time and their help. No matter what department or where you look for help in this house, you get it 100%. But I do also want to say that I'm looking forward to not banging my head off a wall. I've done it for the last nine years. I've had enough of it. Hazel can bang her head off the wall when she comes in here. But I have fantastic colleagues, and we have worked really, really hard to make a difference. We have put forward radical bills that would change the lives of people, would make big changes to the climate and the environment, that would make changes to the way you have created the housing crisis, and would dent the desperation that people feel in health, in homelessness, in housing, in special needs for kids. And in every which way we have been blocked by Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael, as have other progressive measures from the rest of the opposition. So I think what I want to focus on today is how do we end 100 years of Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael. When I was born in 1957, De Valera was in power. And before that, there was Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael since the state was founded. And we still have Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael, albeit that they've shrunk both of them so much that they have to join forces. But I think what's really shameful, and my question to you, Tarnishta, is when will these parties stop making promises in an election and then breaking them once they get into power? When will you stop treating people as if they're just tools of your idea of your control and your power? Because, to be honest, you have always preferred the interests of big business, of developers, of bankers, of the rich in this country. And that's why, as we live in one of the wealthiest countries on the planet, we have one of the greatest levels of inequality. And it is to our shame that that is actually what goes on. And I also have a question for all of the opposition groups and party leaders. When will you stop propping up Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael? And will you make a commitment to the Irish people in this election that if you're returned you will not prop up either of these 100-year-old parties of failure? And the failure is enormous. There's huge suffering in the homes of Ireland today with kids with special needs, scoliosis, people living in crowded, emotionally dangerous conditions and not having any hope for the future. Young workers exiting this country when they've got their degrees, whether it's in education or health, in order to make a life for themselves elsewhere. And indeed your refusal, as we close this Dáil today, your refusal to sanction Israel has been an utter disgrace and will be a legacy of the last Dáil that nobody will accept. It's an utter disgrace that you haven't passed the Occupied Territories Bill, but you're kicking it around now as if it gives you some credibility. So my question is, when will you stop making false promises to the Irish public and breaking them once you get into power? Because we have to end the 100 years of Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael, break the cycle and give people a real alternative. All of us on this side of the House have a responsibility to do that, including, by the way, those who call themselves independent, because they cannot wait to prop up either of the parties after the election. Can I say at the outset that I acknowledge and am acutely aware that the Government and the country are facing significant challenges in respect of housing, the cost of living, health, climate change and many, many other important issues. And I look forward to getting out about the country to debate these issues in the time ahead. But I do think it's important to meet head-on the narrative that the Deputy and her hard left-wing colleagues, along with Sinn Féin, are peddling, that the history of Ireland is somehow in the last century is a history of failure, that Ireland is some sort of a failed state. Because that is a pernicious, insidious lie. The truth is that we have come from being one of the most poverty-stricken countries in the 1920s to now having one of the highest standards of living in the world, with more people in employment than ever before. And these are good jobs. In the last 30 years, the number of people in high-skilled employment has increased by 150%. And I know the Deputy genuinely doesn't have an interest in this. And I've noticed that over the nine years, and of the views of the party she represents. But the story of our success, attracting leading global firms to the country, is talked about around the world. That's what we've spent our time doing. The economic model in this country has worked, and it should be debated in this election. Because I believe in the economic model that has attracted enterprise into the country, and that has allowed native enterprise to develop and grow. And less well-known but equally uninteresting to the deputies are Indigenous Irish companies are among the most productive in all of Europe. For every job created in Ireland by a foreign company, Irish domicile companies create more than one elsewhere. So this puts us in one of the top five nations in the world for creating overseas jobs. We're exporting more goods than ever before, and we are world leaders in food and drink exports. We export 90% of what we produce, and our goods are shipping to more markets and further across the world than ever before. And that economic success has given us the resources to bring about an equally powerful social education and health transformation in that 100 years. We now have an education system that is one of the strongest in Europe and indeed the world. The number of children in secondary level and school completion rates are tops across the European Union, and indeed in terms of the world more generally. Pupil-teacher ratios have never been better. Just more than 50% of the population has completed higher level education. That has doubled in just 20 years. More pupils than at any point in the last century are being taught. We are living much longer now with the average life expectancy of 82 years. We are healthier than we have ever been, and for example smoking is at the lowest level in 50 years. The Deputy may not know this, but Irish people are now living 25 years longer than we were 100 years ago. 20,000 fewer people die in Ireland every year than died a century ago, but our population has grown by 50%. Cancer mortality rates have been declining for the last 30 years, while death from heart disease has decreased by two-thirds in the last 40 years. And in the past 50 years, public spending, I could go on. We have made a lot of progress in this country. And I think it is wrong that you have not at least the good grace to acknowledge the extraordinary progress the country has made, notwithstanding the challenges we have, but we have made progress as a country. Deputy Breed Smith again, please. 25 billion euro as a surplus in the economy. 140,000 people on the housing list. 14,000 to 15,000 on the homeless figures and rising. 1 million people on waiting lists for healthcare. 700,000 people living below the poverty line. We can throw figures across the floor at each other, but these are facts that you do not address. And as a left-wing TD, as a socialist, I came in here to try and address them. And that is why I talked about the headbanging exercises. You are not interested in ending inequality in this country. You and Fine Gael are only interested in looking after the wealthy, the businessmen, the developers, those who gain millions in profits from ripping off people in the cost of living crisis in this country. You have never challenged them. Yes, you will throw us all a few hundred towards the electricity bills, but you never challenge the profiteering and you never challenge those who are milking it in this country, and hence the inequality. It is not rocket science to say that if you have got extreme wealth on the other end and extreme poverty on this end, there is a way of knitting the two and ending the poverty and ending the inequality. And that is to tax the wealth of the rich, to take the money off them and stop being their favourite guys in the Dáil. Be the favourite guys of the ordinary people. And that is why I am saying to the people on this side of the House, we have a duty to stop propping you and Fine Gael up and create a real left alternative around this country. Thank you very much. I am the son of a busman. I came from a working class community. I did not interrupt you. I will tell you so what. I am the son of a busman who is a founding member of the NBRU. I am the first to get to second level education in our family. We were the first generation and the first generation to get to third level. I do not need lecturers from the far left and many from the far left who were educated in far more luxurious schools than I was ever educated in. I had the good grace to let you speak, but you do not have the good grace to allow me to speak. I am a product of the Fianna Fáil-Dunn-O'Malley revolution of free education. I participated in it and it was not God helpless because it brought on a lot of us. It gave me a passion about education. That is why I became a Minister for Education and to make sure that every child in this country should have an opportunity to participate in education. I do not trade figures across the House. When I mention school completion, I mention it because I took part in initiatives. Because it matters to me. It is why I am in politics and you do not have a monopoly. You do not have a monopoly of care or compassion on your side of the House. But I think where you fail is in your understanding and you are a socialist, you are entitled to be. But you have never embraced the Irish economic model. It has created enterprise and opportunities for people to grow and develop. That is the fundamental difference between us. We should debate that in this House. Not the inequality. Don't debate the inequality. That is what I am telling me. You and others want to bring down that economic model. Don't debate the inequality. You want to destroy enterprise in this country which would, I think, make more people unemployed, create more poverty and make us all much poorer. Thank you.