I move amendment No. 2:
To delete all words after "Dáil Éireann" and to substitute therefor:—
"has no confidence in the Taoiseach."
My colleagues and I intend to approach this motion and discuss it entirely in political terms.
It is inevitable because of the issues involved and because the motion is concerned with personal performance, suitability and behaviour that the personality element will obtrude. I would like it to be clear, however, that in so far as these personal attributes may arise for discussion they should be interpreted entirely in a political context.
As last year drew to a close and we entered on 1986 there was a fairly widespread hopeless feeling that this Government were no longer in charge, that the economic and social situation was getting steadily worse and there was no hope that this particular Government could make any progress in tackling the nation's problems. The budget introduced by the then Minister for Finance, Deputy Alan Dukes, was the point at which people finally lost all confidence in this administration and the desire to be rid of them became practically universal.
It was against this background that the Taoiseach embarked on what must certainly be recognised as having been a disastrous exercise, not just from his own personal point of view but for the country as well. The political events of last week, culminating in the Taoiseach's announcement to this House on Tuesday, amount to the greatest political fiasco which Dáil Éireann has ever witnessed. The extraordinary, frenetic atmosphere and the circumstances surrounding that announcement were without precedent or parallel.
The Irish people have been presented with an incredible spectacle and one which must cause grave doubts and serious misgivings about the way their affairs are being handled at national level. They have seen a situation unfold during the course of which the head of the Government has been shown to be unsound in his judgment, treacherous in his relationships, vacillating in his decisions, incompetent in the management of his party and his Government. The outcome of his burlesque performance has been to leave the country with a Government shaken to their foundations, uneasy and unhappy in their membership and obviously incapable of acting as a collective authority as they are directed by the Constitution to do.
We did not put forward this motion of no confidence lightly. It is the first such motion of no confidence in this Taoiseach or in the Government in over three years, even though there were many occasions when we would have been quite justified in putting one down. But we attach great importance to a motion of no confidence in the Taoiseach because of his constitutional position. We believe, however, that last week's manoeuvring was an abject confession of failure by this Taoiseach and that it is our duty as Opposition to put the question of his suitability as Taoiseach to Dáil Éireann. In our view the Taoiseach has behaved in such a way as to forfeit all confidence in either himself or his Government.
No Taoiseach should attempt to continue in office who allows his capacity to rearrange his Cabinet to be disrupted by one single Minister who flouts his authority with impunity.
The farcical sequence of last week's events has been fairly well documented by the public media. The wheeling and dealing, the blustering, bartering and backstabbing went on into the early hours of Thursday morning, was resumed again later that morning and went on all day Thursday until finally, in frantic and undignified haste, the Taoiseach made it into the Dáil just minutes before it adjourned on Thursday evening, to announce a meaningless rearrangement of the same assortment of failures. What a pathetic sight that was, what a humiliation, what an insult to the Irish people and their democracy.
It is now known, for certain, that the Taoiseach totally failed to move Deputy Barry Desmond out of the Department of Health, that he was forced by the exigiencies of the situation to put members of the Government into Departments he did not want them in, that he failed to achieve the restructuring of Departments he sought, that in the end the Government were put together in a state of desperate panic. It is now admitted also that the Taoiseach misled the Dáil and the public over what took place.
The attempt by the Taoiseach to remove Deputy Barry Desmond from the Department of Health and the failure of that attempt is one of the central matters in this whole affair. Every Deputy in this House knows that the general public are aghast and incredulous at the fact that this Taoiseach is unable to move a Minister out of a Department and that a Minister of this Government can refuse to be transferred. A Taoiseach who cannot appoint and remove Ministers is no longer in fact the head of the Government, or any longer in a position to discharge his constitutional responsibilities.
The Minister for Health over the last three years has set about demolishing the health services of this country, as we have known them, with perverted zeal. He exercised his mandate as Minister for Health in an aggressive, confrontational, dictatorial and totally unacceptable manner. He has frightened and upset the patients, antagonised nurses, doctors, administrators and staffs throughout the health service. He should have been removed long ago. But the fact is that he had the full support of this Government and this Taoiseach in what he has been doing over the last three years.
There was never any public suggestion of disagreement by the Taoiseach or any other member of the Government, not, that is, until he caused consternation by his precipitate announcement without warning or consultation of the closure of eight hospitals. The story behind these closures is that on being asked to secure further reductions in the Health Estimate for 1986 he indicated to the Government that he would do so by closing these eight hospitals. In making these closures, Deputy Barry Desmond as Minister for Health was acting with the approval of the Government and the Taoiseach.
It is therefore particularly reprehensible for the Taoiseach, when the public anger burst forth, as he should have known it would, that he should try to throw his Minister to the wolves in an effort to keep them away from his own door. But it did not work and we are left with a Minister who insists that he is only prepared to serve the people of this country in one particular position on his own terms and conditions. "I will not be curbed", the Minister is quoted as saying in what amounts to open revolt. He has demanded that he be allowed to continue along the same path, which has led to a widespread breakdown and disruption of our health services and the Taoiseach has ignominiously capitulated.
I have seen references in some newspapers to the possibility that one of the principal reasons for the anxiety to get Deputy Barry Desmond out of the Department of Health was because of his insistence on pursuing the campaign to curtail the advertisement of tobacco products. From my own personal experience I know the sort of pressure that can be mounted by the tobacco lobby and I would not be prepared to dismiss these suggestions. Can we have the truth about this aspect? Was pressure brought to bear to have Deputy Desmond moved by Fine Gael big business interests? Is there a letter in the Taoiseach's office from the tobacco companies?
On Thursday night last on television, the Taoiseach gave the nation an untrue account of what had taken place and what the situation was. That, to put it mildly, was not in keeping with the standards which someone holding the post of Taoiseach is expected to uphold.
On Thursday, the Minister for Health was telling everybody, on the radio and elsewhere, how he had won the war, how he had defeated the attempt to move him. The Taoiseach, however, went on television and virtually pretended that none of it had ever happened and he specifically stated that he was very happy that Deputy Desmond was staying on as Minister for Health. Everybody knows that that was simply untrue and that he had spent the previous 24 hours trying to remove him. We now have a Minister in a key position, embroiled in controversy on many fronts, who does not have, but even more astonishingly does not need the backing of the Taoiseach.
I have here a transcript of an interview given by the Taoiseach on the "Today Tonight" programme of 13 February 1986. The interviewer asked the Taoiseach: "But could we be quite specific in regard to Barry Desmond? Is it the case that you wanted to shift him? Is it the case that he refused to be shifted?". The Taoiseach replied: "No, I discussed it with him to see what his view was.... So I'm very happy indeed for him to carry on there". That categorical "no" was a clear, specific untruth, uttered by the Taoiseach in front of the nation.
The Taoiseach stated in that same interview that it was absolutely necessary to divide the portfolios of Health and Social Welfare, because of the report of the Commission on Social Welfare. He said: "I want to get that report as fast as possible implemented, and for the rest a clear direction given before the next election. That's why I have shifted Gemma Hussey". That is an untruth. The Taoiseach had already offered Deputy Hussey a post as Minister for European Affairs. Therefore, the reason the Taoiseach shifted Deputy Hussey had nothing whatever to do with the report of the Commission on Social Welfare. That "Today Tonight" interview contained a procession of untruths by the Taoiseach.
In the course of his announcement to this House on Thursday afternoon last, the Taoiseach said and I quote verbatim from the Taoiseach's announcement which I have in front of me:
In relation to Ministers of State I have today accepted the resignations of Deputy Joe Bermingham from office as Minister of State at the Department of Finance,
Deputy Michael D'Arcy from office as Minister of State at the Department of Fisheries and Forestry and at the Department of the Gaeltacht and,
Deputy Donal Creed from office as Minister of State at the Department of Education.
By making that statement the Taoiseach is guilty of most serious misconduct; misconduct which, in our view, is a resigning matter. He has misinformed the Dáil. The facts which he was aware of are different from what he has said they were. We have proof of this from two of the Ministers of State involved, Deputy Donal Creed and Deputy Michael D'Arcy.
In The Cork Examiner on Monday 17 February Deputy Donal Creed is quoted as saying:
If Garret FitzGerald said he had resigned, then the Taoiseach was telling a lie.
There is no grey area of room for doubt there. In the same paper, on the same date, Deputy Michael D'Arcy is quoted as saying that:
he had refused to resign and that the Taoiseach had told him that the decision was taken.
The Taoiseach has since admitted that what he told the Dáil on Thursday last was untrue and that neither Deputy D'Arcy nor Deputy Creed resigned. The national handlers, we are told, are busily promoting the notion that the Taoiseach was not lying but that he was using technical language in order to save the faces of the two Deputies. I am afraid, however, that subterfuge will not work. The Taoiseach had just sacked these two Deputies — dismissed them. In both cases, the dismissal was both selective and brutal and we can hardly be expected to believe in such circumstances that he was concerned about their feelings and wished to pretend that they had resigned.
Neither of the two Deputies wanted any subterfuge. They have both been very anxious to make it clear to the public that they did not resign, but that they were sacked. They did not want the Taoiseach to pretend something which was not true. Is the Taoiseach claiming that he misinterpreted their wishes, that he thought they would wish him to pretend they resigned? It is clear he had no grounds for thinking that and that he was telling an untruth for his own sake, trying to put a good face on his political manoeuvrings.