A junior minister in the Government has resigned over its handling of the fuel protests.<\/p>\n
Michael Healy-Rae, who was among several independent TDs who supported the formation of a coalition with Fianna F\u00e1il and Fine Gael, said he would be voting against the Government in a confidence motion relating to the fuel crisis on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Healy-Rae also announced his resignation as Minister of State with responsibility for forestry, farm safety and horticulture within the Department of Agriculture.<\/p>\n
He had supported the Government formation alongside his brother Danny Healy-Rae, both independent TDs for Kerry.<\/p>\n
The outgoing minister said he had listened to protesters and canvassers as he thanked his family, friends and constituency workers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always looked at myself as a gauge of the people of rural Ireland, and I really believe that I am,\u201d he told the D\u00e1il.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I see people on the side of the road, when I\u2019ve seen grown men crying\u2026 when I met tractor men, lorry men, farmers and when they were telling me how unhappy they were, the leader of the country should have listened.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause of the fact that I believe this government have let the people of Ireland down, I will be voting no confidence in the leader of the country, and I will be tendering my resignation as a minister of state from now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would ask that future governments and this government that they would listen, that they would be kind, that they would be understanding.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are farmers that are really suffering so much at present. There are agricultural contractors that are really suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A junior minister in the Government has resigned over its handling of the fuel protests. Michael Healy-Rae, who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-398196","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}