Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

If I may say so, that was a long way of stating the obvious. One enters an agreement for the purposes of support for a Government, if one withdraws support from it, then obviously the relationship changes. That is obvious. There is nothing surreptitious or sinister about it.

In regard to specific areas of policy, the Government has outlined its intentions in this and other respects. In terms of my own interests in that area, I defend the Government's policies in those areas. Our efforts to prioritise those areas in the past compares favourably with any predecessor Government one would like to mention. I do not have any problem standing over those particular aspects. As the Deputy Ó Caoláin said, they are not the preserve of any one, two or three Deputies, these are interests we all share.

What political agreements allow us to do from time to time is to bring a focus to certain issues on the basis that we can in that way maintain sufficient numbers in the House to pursue a programme for Government. What we have seen since then is a deterioration in the public finance position of which we must take serious note. All programmes for Government worth their name are constructed on the basis of trying to maintain and restore order to the public finances in order that we can have a sustainable level of service going forward. Where there are changed economic circumstances, one must take cognisance of that. If one is in opposition, perhaps one does not have to worry about that aspect, but if one is in government, one has to do so.

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