Rising to his feet from the government benches, Healy-Rae said he\u2019d spent Monday night talking to aggrieved voters in the Plough Bar in his County Kerry constituency \u2014 and had come away persuaded he should stop supporting Martin.<\/p>\n
\u201cI met tractor men, lorry men, farmers, telling me how unhappy they were. The leader of the country should have listened,\u201d Healy-Rae told a hushed chamber.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Healy-Rae accused the government of lacking sympathy for farmers and truckers struggling to pay runaway diesel prices. \u201cPeople cried at the protests \u2014 and they were workers! They were respectable people!\u201d he shouted.<\/p>\n
He then exited the Leinster House parliamentary building to cheers from the hundreds of fuel-price protesters, mostly middle-aged men, who had gathered outside behind security barriers.<\/p>\n
Healy-Rae \u2014 who invariably dons an Irish flat cap \u2014 is the scion of one of Ireland\u2019s most cunning and colorful political families, profiled by POLITICO<\/a> back in 2020.<\/p>\n