Seán Power (Kildare South, Fianna Fail)

At the outset I would like to welcome the two new Members, Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan and Deputy George Lee, to the House. In fairness to Deputy O'Sullivan, she has had a long association with the late Deputy Tony Gregory and while we differed on many issues, nobody would argue that he supported people who had been neglected in the past or who did not get the attention they deserved. It will give people some hope in human nature that much of that good work has been acknowledged. I wish Deputy O'Sullivan well in the House.

Deputy Lee has got a great deal of publicity and in fairness to him his maiden speech was quite constructive, although I would disagree with a number of aspects of it, particularly regarding the mandate. We were all given a mandate but when we come into this House and elect a Taoiseach, that is done by the 166 Members in the House. The Taoiseach's mandate is the same as that which Deputy Bertie Ahern, Albert Reynolds, John Bruton, Garret FitzGerald and Charles Haughey had previously. It is no different in that regard.

Regarding the confidence motion before the House, Fine Gael has been doing a great deal of gloating in recent days, perhaps with good reason. It has had success, which it has been starved of for many years. It is important, however, that we examine the way we do our business in the House. Some people might regard the debate on the motion as being a waste of time in that the result is probably a foregone conclusion but in the past we attempted to change the way we do business here. I would say this about all parties but we must approach our business here in a much more mature manner. There are enormous challenges facing this country, ones that none of us could have foreseen when we were first elected to this House. The people want us to take a mature approach and not divide constantly on issues or taking different approaches. That is what has happened here. The Government propose something and the Opposition will immediately knock it.

Equally, from a Government point of view, we do not give Opposition proposals the type of scrutiny they deserve. As Deputy George Lee said earlier, no economist has a single solution to how the problems in the banking system can be resolved. We all bring certain talents to the House. People should show respect to one another in that regard and act a little more wisely when we are trying to deal with the serious challenges facing us.

The major problem we face is taking control of the public finances. That is a priority for any Government, and we must act responsibly in that regard. If we have only €35 billion coming in through taxes in a year, it is impossible to spend much more than that. That is where parties will have to make the difficult decisions and not try to deceive the public. We cannot be all things to all people. Difficult decisions will have to be made. We must make a number of cutbacks in different areas to restore the public finances to an acceptable level.

While canvassing in recent weeks I met a number of people who expressed the view that they were prepared to make sacrifices but they did not see any fairness in it. I read in the newspaper this morning the list of tax defaulters and the late Joe Dolan is included on it. What purpose does that serve? Where is the fairness in that? What purpose does it serve publishing in a newspaper the name of a person who is dead who had a difficulty with tax which apparently has now been resolved? We always had a tradition of not speaking ill of the dead. I see no purpose in changing that and I hope we can deal with that area in the future.

I believe we could have acted differently in the past but we did not. We are all that much wiser now when we see the way the recession has gone, but not one person in Ireland predicted the enormity of the shortfall we are currently experiencing. In attempting to address that major challenge the Government is dealing with it in an honest way.

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