Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

——and they will be. Health should be the number one issue for any Government because health is the number one issue in almost everyone's life. We know now that the crises in health and elsewhere come behind ambition, appeasement and survival.

Away from the talking heads, the revolting backbenchers and the egotistical battles of the wannabe leaders, accident and emergency departments have become somewhere to be avoided, not attended. People are happier to take their chances at home than make the choice of going to casualty. For too many people, hospitals have become sources of life-threatening infection not healing. Many medical professionals now work to the limits not of their ability but of their endurance.

We have the intractable problem of putting a roof over one's head. Shelter is good and the Government has advanced here too. It has advanced adolescence to what used to be middle age, condemning 43,000 30-somethings to life at home with mammy and daddy. The Government has advanced so much it has created a new breed of Dubliner, the "Dulchie", who are born, reared and work in Dublin and hoped to live there. However, they can be found all over the new suburbs of Wicklow, Wexford, Kildare, Laois, Carlow and Louth. The Government left them out in the cold and did not plan for their future because the only thing it plans for is the next election, local or general.

It is epitomised by the comment of the Minister for Defence, Deputy O'Dea, that he was surprised the recent poll was not worse for the Government, effectively stating its Members can do what they want because they have a right to govern, and because they do, the "Dulchies" leave this city in droves. If the traffic is moving they will commute to work for only 25 hours in their five-day working week. The Government has stranded them miles from their jobs, social fabric and the supports they will need in the years ahead.

One could state the Government's solution to help first-time buyers has done for them what Fr. Ted did for Bishop Brennan. If Government Members do not know what that was, I am sure Fr. Dougal's dad, who normally sits in the Chair, will advise them. To help first-time buyers, the Government abolished the first-time house-buyer's grant, failed to meet its own social housing commitments in the national development programme, hiked up VAT on houses and supported levies that will put an extra €10,000, on average, onto the cost of a new house. Proposals were made on this side of the House on special SSIA type schemes for deposits, stamp duty abolition and on front-loading mortgage interest relief for the first seven years.

Now to the intractable problem of inflation. People might hear about inflation from George Lee. However, they feel and live with it in almost every area of their lives every day. With inflation now running at almost 4%, prices go through the roof. Every time one fills one's car or one's trolley, goes out for a meal, pays a bill, paints the house or gives the children a treat, it costs much more. Is it any wonder Ireland tops the EU as the most expensive place to live? In the worldwide stakes, Paris, Vienna, Miami and even Los Angeles are all cheaper than Dublin. That should shake the barley of the Minister for Arts, Sports and Tourism, Deputy O'Donoghue, but it probably will not.

That top-of-the-range expense is not surprising when one considers that in the 12 months to 2005, Government sector prices absolutely rocketed. They increased at six times the rate of regular inflation. Under the Government's control they are out of control. The costs of hospital charges, health insurance and primary and secondary education have all increased by more than one tenth. Considering the rate rise in ESB and gas bills is enough to give people heart failure. To add insult to injury, the Government has hit the public with a battery of stealth taxes. Add that to rising mortgage rates and couples and families really start to feel the pain.

In the end, the most worrying aspect of the Government for the Opposition and the people is the potent mix of blind panic and blinder ambition which has put Ireland in a state of permanent contingency. We wondered about the fatigue, casualness and inertia mentioned by Deputy Rabbitte, and the growing contradictions, ambiguity and see-sawing between the former partners and now we know why.

Thanks to the action of the noblest Roman of them all, Brutus himself, we know the most important business, the public business, hangs not on what the people need or on what the Government plans, if it does plan. The public business of what happens in our hospitals and classrooms and what happens to our competitiveness, our old people, the criminal justice system and our children all hang on one thing alone. They hang on the latest twist of the love-hate saga between Fianna Fáil and the PDs.

Above all else, that is why an early general election is necessary. This Government, this federation of factions, is damaged and fractured beyond repair. There is no trust between the parties in Government nor is there any trust within them. Therefore, they should not be trusted to run the country. Confusion reigns throughout this Government. That confusion is contagious and it dampens every useful undertaking. In the fiasco of the rape legislation we watched that confusion spread like wildfire across the country, as the Taoiseach left for the United States and left leadership when it was needed to the Opposition benches. We believe Ireland cannot afford or does not deserve another minute of that confusion, paranoia or contingency, never mind five more years.

What we must remember about this Government and the promises it made is not just that it has broken its promises, which it has, it is more that it kept all the promises it intended to keep. Because of those promises made, kept or broken we have slaughter on our roads——

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