Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael)

While the Government might win the vote tonight the people will be in the long grass waiting for them when the election is called. The banking crisis was home-baked. This week, when Max Watson was speaking at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service he said it was clear there was a culture of not rocking the boat here in recent years. He is right that such a culture existed during the Fianna Fáil period in Government in recent years. The ingredient for this home baked crisis was a cosy cartel which developed between the Government, the bankers and their developer friends. Nobody wanted to rock the boat. Good banking practices and regulatory controls were abandoned in the stampede to keep pace with the property boom.

To compound our difficulties when concerns were raised that our economy was overheating and that corrective action was required, those who spoke out were accused of being the prophets of doom. Even in July 2008, when the dogs in the street knew corrective action was required to deal with the country's deteriorating finances, the Taoiseach urged people to stop talking as if the economy was facing Armageddon. Turning a blind eye to any alarm bells was common practice. The Central Bank of Ireland buried data from a crucial report months before the collapse of the housing market here in 2007, which bears remarkable similarity to what happened in the United States and Goldman Sachs.

It is now the most vulnerable and weakest in our society who are suffering because of the Government's mismanagement of the economy. Yesterday, the respite day centre which is run by the Brothers of Charity in Limerick, and which accommodates a number of people with disabilities and their families from County Clare closed its doors because €150,000 could not be found to keep it open, yet every householder in the country is being saddled with a €30,000 debt by this Government to support the €54 billion gamble on NAMA.

An opinion poll over the weekend indicated that 57% of people want a general election. The Taoiseach should consider that and dissolve this Dáil to give the people a say in what they want.

The economy has been mismanaged and the Government has been there too long. It is tired, jaded and has run out of ideas. That is what has put us in the current position.

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