Michael Mullins (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister who gave a frank and honest assessment of the Government's performance and the start we have made. I do not believe people feel let down. The recent opinion polls published indicated that the support for both Fine Gael and Labour is holding strong because people voted for change and for a Government to come in and resolve the awful mess it inherited. I will not be a bit embarrassed if this Government has to back-track on some of the promises made during the course of an election campaign because we cannot afford to honour some of those commitments. If we must postpone some of them, so be it.

We should never again face a situation such as the one this Government has had to face. We had 14 years of serious mismanagement of the country.