Government survive confidence vote

Time is running out for the current Irish Government despite it surviving a confidence vote yesterday, a Cork TD has said.

Yesterday morning’s meeting of Dáil Éireann, which was marred by flared tempers and continuous interruptions from all sides, saw the Government win 86 votes to 67.

Triggered by the Labour Party, the vote came in response to Ireland’s current housing “disaster” and the imminent cessation of the eviction ban which ends tomorrow, Friday.

During the meeting, a number of ministers and TDs from Government parties accused the Labour Party of engaging in political opportunism and ridiculed its recent proposal to build 1 million homes in a decade.

An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar went as far as describing the party’s behaviour as “political theatre” and “performance art”.

Addressing the Dáil, Cork TD and leader of the Social Democrats, Holly Cairns, voted no confidence in the Government and said the people it has failed had lost confidence in the current Government a long time ago and “it’s never coming back”.

Deputy Cairns said: “They have no confidence in the Government’s ability to solve the housing disaster, they have no confidence in your plans, no confidence in your promises, they no longer even have confidence in your presentation of information.

She added: “Every day we hear the same attempts to spin failure into success, somehow weakness becomes tenacity, delay becomes urgency, defeat becomes victory.”

“If the Government survives this vote on this occasion, I expect there will be more votes of no confidence because time is running out for this Government.”

On the other side of the room, Cork Fianna Fáil TD and Minister for Finance, Michael McGrath, said he heard solutions to the crisis offered by opposition parties.

He said: “I listened to the opposition speaking for 20 minutes and I didn’t hear any new ideas, I heard no positivity, all I heard was 20 minutes of negativity, bitterness, and particularly from Sinn Féin, a personalised diatribe towards the minister for housing which will do absolutely nothing to provide a home for a single family in this country in the weeks and the months ahead.”

Independent Cork TD Michael Collins, who voted no confidence, said: “I’m not going to concentrate too much on the housing, I’ve spoken enough about it over the last number of year, nobody’s listening.

“Look at the health system in this country, look at other areas where there’s been failures, over 1 million people on waiting lists.

“You never tackled the energy companies. Look at the fishing crisis. Look at the farmers of this country, you’re damning Irish dairy farmers. It’s an absolute scandal what you’ve done.”