Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

It looks like this is an east-coast Government. It looks like there is only one Minister from Connacht or Ulster in the Cabinet. Some 60% of the Ministers in this Government are from the greater Dublin area. That is not spatial development. The west is certainly not awake in this Government.

It is incredible that the Cabinet is being named on the day the news broke that 30,000 homes were built in the State last year. Housing is the biggest issue affecting this country and the Government has been in reverse. When the new Taoiseach awoke this morning, on the day of his elevation, tens of thousands of people in this country awoke in homelessness. While the Taoiseach was in Áras an Uachtaráin, young families were in the airports, emigrating to escape the high price of rents and houses. Ministers had to wait for one day for their ministerial seals but there are hundreds of thousands of people in this country who are waiting for hospital and health treatment at the same time. It is interesting that so much of the Leinster House campus was festooned with gardaí when many of our citizens are dodging town centres because of the lack of gardaí in those areas.

It is also important to say that many parents are lying awake every night trying to decide how they are going to make ends meet with the money they have. Yet, we have newly minted Ministers of State who are going to be counting €800 per day in salary for every day they work over the next while. One of the biggest problems I have with this Government is the fact that things are moving so slowly on so many different projects. It is interesting that 89 days will have passed from the last time there were consecutive sittings of the Dáil until the next time it next sits on consecutive days. There is a slow, bureaucratic culture at the heart of this Government. That is also to be seen in practically every infrastructural project that is happening at the moment and it has consequences. This Government has the urgency relating to the national children's hospital.

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