A general election will be held “in due course”, Taoiseach Simon Harris has said, as he was challenged by People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy to call an election and accused of cynically using immigration in the local elections to hide the Government’s “failures” in housing, health and public services.
Mr Harris told Mr Murphy: “I’m really looking forward to a general election because there will definitely be alternative views on offer.”
He insisted that his was not a “nasty party” or “nasty Government” in relation to immigration.
Earlier Mr Murphy accused Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald of using special needs as a “political football” to create anxiety for parents and told her not to “Mary Lousplain to me” on the issue of respite summer provision as she accused the Government of cutting the capitation payment for summer projects.
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He said his own family had benefited from the programme, and he took a swipe at Ms McDonald, accusing her of “one setting of performative outrage”. Politicians should engage on substantive issues, he said. “I would have thought you learned that this weekend.”
Election results came up a number of times during exchanges in the Dáil on leaders questions and Independent TD Thomas Pringle said that in Donegal Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael had only retained two thirds of their seats and the 100 per cent Redress party is now a larger party than Fine Gael on Donegal council because of the crumbling blocks crisis.
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Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns people were not interested in a “Punch and Judy Show” or petty political one-upmanship, but voters trusted and voted for her party’s candidates.
Mr Harris congratulated her on her party’s performance but said that “lots of people also voted for my party and lots of people voted for my Coalition party colleagues” and “more than around 53 per cent of council seats have gone to councillors from Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party”, so she should bear that in mind.
When Mr Murphy called for an election, he said it would “focus minds” and a united Left could provide an alternative.
The Taoiseach said “I’m not sure who’s in this left coalition whether you have Sinn Féin in it or not. Maybe they’re not sure themselves either but they’ll work it out after they have their review.”
Mr Murphy said that during the election “we did see a very cynical attempt by the Government to make immigration the central issue to distract from your failures”.
“Almost every week in the run up to the election, you had new policies of performative cruelty,” he said. New figures showed that the “Government spent almost €100,000 in clearing tents and erecting fences along the canal, while there are thousands of empty beds in state-provided accommodation.”
He added that “announcing cuts to payments for Ukrainian women and children means testing of asylum seekers who was a trap designed for Sinn Féin and one that they unfortunately fell right into by welcoming each of these measures and saying they would go further”.
But the Taoiseach said Mr Murphy was “beyond wrong” on the Government’s approach to migration. He respected that he consistently called out racism. But the “absolute worst thing for parties of the centre to do is to get off the pitch, to shirk responsibility” on this issue. He said that would be a “failure of leadership. And the only thing that happens when you allow that vacuum to be created is it gets filled by the far right.”
“What we’re going to do in this country is have a functioning migration system that is fair, that has rules that will be applied without fear or favour.”
Mr Harris insisted that “his party isn’t a nasty party. This Government isn’t a nasty party government. It is one that actually wants to push back against the rhetoric of the extremes, deliver for people and make sure we have a sustainable system.”
Earlier, Ms McDonald said families of children with special needs struggle to provide summer provision and the Government had cut the capitation payment from €45 to just €30 a week, “which completely undermines the quality and the type of activities that can be offered to children, placing incredible pressure on schools”. She highlighted the case of Jack, a child with Down syndrome who could not access summer provision.
The Taoiseach insisted that every day he intended to prioritise special education needs every day which he established the Cabinet Committee on Disability which he chairs.
He said there had been no cut in the budget, but the deployment of the budget had been changed based on feedback. He added that there were 300 more schools applying to offer a summer schools programme. And he called on her not to “Mary Lousplain to me on this issue as well” as the Government fully supported and would continue to support summer provision.
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