Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick East, Labour)

I wish to share time with Deputy Seán Sherlock who will speak tomorrow.

The Acting Chairman never said a truer word than that the Minister's time was up and not only for this Minister but the whole lot of them. Unfortunately, they will win the vote of confidence tomorrow not because the people who normally sit behind the Minister, the Green Party Members who occasionally come to the House, the two left-over Members of the Progressive Democrats and the couple of Independent Members who are hanging in there have confidence in the Government, but because they are terrified to face the statistic quoted by the very wise Deputy P.J. Sheehan, who spoke about the 24% of the vote that Fianna Fáil got and the fact that they would return after a general election with 40 Deputies. That is why the Government will win the vote of confidence tomorrow.

I listened to two Ministers speaking this evening and the second was slightly more realistic than the first, but not by much. The Minister for Arts, Sports and Tourism, Deputy Martin Cullen, was in a state of complete denial. He came in and gave a load of bluster and guff and that is precisely why the people have no confidence in the Fianna Fáil Party and the Government it leads. The Minister who is still in the House blamed the international banks for the fact that the banks in Ireland are in trouble. He then blamed the Opposition, but I did not hear any blame falling on the Government and that is precisely the problem.

The Bible says not to worry about the mote in the eye of everybody else but to look at the beam in one's own eye. The problem is that the Government is not looking at the beam in its own eye. I was listening to Deputy Mattie McGrath on Newstalk on my way up here today and he expressed the real fear and views of the backbenchers. I do not know whether he will come to the House and repeat what he said about the Taoiseach on air today. It is not that they have confidence in the Government, but that they are terrified of the consequences of not voting in favour of the motion tomorrow.

The Minister, Deputy Ó Cuív, said we are where we are and spoke about the fellow in west Cork who said to the tourist looking for directions, "I wouldn't start from here", but we have been led up the highways and byways for the past 12 years to precisely where we are now. Twelve years ago we were much closer to where we want to be in that we were creating 1,000 jobs a week. Deputy Ruarí Quinn was the Minister for Finance and previously the Minister for Enterprise and Employment. The Irish economy was functioning very well. We were in the black, not in the red, but we are where we are because we have been led here by the Minister's party. We must get real about that.

We must also get real about the Opposition's plans and proposals. We have put forward many proposals but the Minister has not listened to them or has not been interested. He criticised us for not having any proposals but then proceeded to dissect one or two of the proposals he has heard from the Opposition. On the one hand he is saying we do not have any proposals and on the other he is saying our proposals are wrong or that Fine Gael and Labour do not agree with each other.

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