Confidence and supply agreement
Senator Ó Ríordáin attacked the confidence and supply agreement as meaningless and said the main parties had failed to produce any plan on Brexit, housing, homelessness or health. The exchange was repeatedly interrupted by interjections and procedural comments.
I genuinely want to ask the Leader for a debate with anybody in government who can justify the new confidence and supply agreement. It reminds me of when a mother used to come home having left her child to tidy up the house. Nothing would have been cleaned up and she would ask, "What have you been doing for the last number of hours?" We have had high level negotiations between two crack teams from Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil for six weeks-----
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Two crack teams. Two teams of the highest calibre.
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With that Dublin accent of the Senator, I get lost now and again.
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The best negotiators they could find, three from each side, in secret negotiations over a period of months-----
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They came out with not even a sheet of paper between them.
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The Senator will have to take down his posters.
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The frustrating thing, as the Leader will agree, is that this country faces a huge number of challenges - Brexit, homelessness, housing and the health crisis, which have all been mentioned today.
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Is the Senator saying the Labour Party will do better than the Labour Party in England?
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Order, Senator Lawlor. You are the next speaker. If you want to use this opportunity instead of speaking then, I will take you off the list.
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Is it not unbelievable that the two main parties in the Oireachtas could have six weeks of negotiations and not come up with a single sheet of paper with a single word written on it? If they had a single sheet of paper with the word "homelessness" written on it, at least we could have an argument over and back as to the importance of that word or what they are going to do about it. However, they literally came up with nothing. We are being governed on the basis of nothing. We had an agreement that went up to the budget last year. Water was the most important issue two and a half years ago and it took up the vast bulk of that agreement. Now, we have a crisis of homelessness and, after six weeks of negotiations, not even a sheet of paper emerges. It is unbelievable. Somebody from the Government should come in here to account for it.
On a more positive note, I would like to debate in this House the nature of female participation in sport by girls and women. Anybody who observed the RTÉ sports awards at the weekend will see that massive advances are being made in female participation in sport, which is to be remarked upon and encouraged. There is a campaign, 20x20, which is seeking a 20% increase in funding, a 20% increase in participation and a 20% increase in coverage of women's sport by 2020. It would be a good idea to have the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport in the House to discuss the issue and the 20x20 campaign and to see what politics can do to help that agenda for female participation in sport by girls and women.