Michael Collins

In the past month, Ireland has seen the damage we have done to our own economy by not being energy independent. We import fossil fuel and now we know how delicate this is. One major disruption and Ireland goes dry. We all know we must steer away from fossil fuels and towards renewables but the Tánaiste knows for today, tomorrow and far into the future, tractors, lorries and hi-macs will need fossi…

I appreciate Minister of State is here but I thought the Minister for energy would be before us today because the Minister of State, Deputy Dooley, is before us every day of the week on every issue. He will soon become Taoiseach of the country. He had a great go at us on RTÉ yesterday. That is part of the game. This is a very serious issue. I am very critical of the Green Party because it spent f…

I want to concentrate on the senior management in SouthDoc and their appalling treatment of a doctor and her patients in Clonakilty and its surrounds. Dr. Fiona O'Reilly has run an excellent practice in Clonakilty for many years. For health reasons, she is unable to do SouthDoc hours. Instead of SouthDoc working with Dr. O'Reilly, it has decided, in its wisdom, to punish her and her patients. Toda…

An inquiry needs to be set up-----

-----as to who made this shocking decision.

That is not good enough.

That is not good enough.

We are talking about something I am very passionate about myself, being a soccer fan since I was four or five years of age. I have the luck or misfortune, whichever way you look at it, of following Arsenal Football Club.

It started when Liam Brady, David O'Leary, Frank Stapleton and Pat Jennings played there. There were I think seven Irishmen playing with at the time so it was like watching Ireland play instead of watching Arsenal play. We are suffering at the moment but I think we are holding out Sporting CP at the moment. It is 0-0 and we are 1-0 up on aggregate so it looks like we are heading to a semi-final, b…

Eighteen days ago the Irish Haulage Farming Construction Contractors Amalgamation, IHFCCA, wrote to the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and every Minister in this country outlining the crisis that we had and asking them to speak with it. The Government refused to speak with it. A few days later Independent Ireland asked to reconvene the Dáil and the Taoiseach refused to speak with us. Now the Taoiseach is…

What is the silence about this? It is time to speak out and give us our opportunity to ask questions about the disgrace that went on in the past week.

The Minister of State is finished as an Independent.

Game over.

Hear, hear.

In the ten years since I came into the Dáil, I have never seen such a shambolic disgrace of a Government across the way. Its TDs should all be ashamed of themselves. Every one of them. They do not have the decency----

Do not say be saying anything to me. You ruin fisheries and you are there chanting that you are a great man-----

I gave you your time to talk and I did not interfere. I travelled the country to try to make peace-----

Sorry. I hope the Leas-Cheann Comhairle will mind the clock for me.

I never interfered when they were talking. The clock is-----

I travelled to a meeting in Portlaoise up to 20 days ago. The people there wrote to the Taoiseach. They wrote to every one of the Ministers - not just the Taoiseach, but also the Tánaiste - to try to make sure that there would be no protest, to sit down and have dialogue, and to see whether we could come to a solution for the hauliers and other sectors out there. The Government turned its back on …

That is a disgrace.

We never blocked anything. Even the Minister of State cannot-----

I never blocked anything.

That is all that was needed to negotiate. You should have done the same if you were representing your people. Shame on you.

We came into the Dáil in Independent Ireland-----