Today we stand here for respectful debate on behalf of the people we represent at a time of maximum geopolitical uncertainty. It is impacting globally and it is impacting our people. We know that, we see that and we feel that because we are elected representatives in a small, democratic State and we are connected to our people. We know in Ireland we are more impacted than so many others because of the small and deeply internationally interconnected nature of the very stable and successful State that, together, everyone with every perspective has built. This means two things: we have to continue to protect the stable strength of our people and we have to move to defend the country's weaknesses. We know we have to keep our people's lights on without dependence on abroad and without the price shocks we have seen from the actions of totally unpredictable players. The time, if it ever existed, for objecting to the development of our infrastructure, however politely, is now long gone. Energy security is central to the functioning of our society. We have seen that this week. Fortunately, we are a small island in the North Atlantic so we can build it, and we can built it well. We have built this State together on predictability, stability and consensus in our courts, in our social partnership and in our democracy. As Minister for Health, I thank all of those who turned up to provide a stable and predictable health service for our patients in the face of real difficulty last week. Those who work in our healthcare face challenges turning up to work and doing their job, but they turned up and kept clinics open longer for patients who themselves had difficulty getting there. They turned up for each other and I thank them. As a public representative, I embrace protest. In our democracy, I welcome protest. I will defend it and freedom of expression for all. These are parts of our constitutional politics. We fund civic society in this House in many ways to enable an even more vibrant civic debate. However, when protest flips and steps across to become something else - to risking deliveries of chemotherapies in our hospitals, as it did, to risking timely deliveries of refrigerated medicines and blocking people getting to time-sensitive medical appointments like cancer treatments and dialysis, that is not protest that we enable and embrace. That is something I do not believe our very decent people and our very decent society want us to make any part of this State. We may now have to face even bigger challenges ahead because of the continuing instability in the Middle East. We have to decide now to protect the strength and the stability we have created together and protect ourselves from the type of crossing over of protest that we saw last week. When this is finished, we will all go back as Ministers to our Departments, except for the Minister of State, Deputy Healy-Rae, to whom I pay tribute for his contribution and hard work on behalf of the Government and the Independent group more broadly. I know the Minister, Deputy Heydon, will speak to that. The Ministers of State, Deputies Butler, Murnane O'Connor and O’Donnell, and I will go back to the Department of Health to work on behalf of the people, to expand capacity, improve access and support the people who are delivering our health service on all days no matter what.

Sentiment score: 0.20