Dáil debates

Wednesday, 10 June 2009

Confidence in Government: Motion (resumed)

 

4:00 am

Photo of Bernard DurkanBernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)

Like my colleagues, I do not have confidence in the Government and neither have the people who voted last week. They have no confidence because they are scared of what the Government has done, what it is about to do and what it has threatened to do. They are scared of the punishment that has been meted out already and of the punishment the Government has promised them in the future. People who are watching this debate see Government Deputies in denial, blaming the Opposition and calling on the Opposition to spell out what it would do. The Government has been in office for 12 years and it has not spelled anything out. The Government has brought the country into a swamp and has led it astray. They are now punishing the people who followed them into that morass.

I listened to the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Power, in total disbelief as he talked about the 1980s, when a Government tidied up the economy when the country had been led astray. In 1977, Fianna Fáil, and subsequently the Progressive Democrats, led the country astray by abolishing car tax and rates and promising the people easy times. The economy lasted only two years until it came to a halt. When a new Government took over in 1981, there was no money to pay civil servants, gardaí, nurses, doctors or teachers. The kitty was empty. I know because I was here debating the difficulty.

This morning in reply to Deputy Enda Kenny, the Taoiseach said the following:

What is clear is that on 29 May the bank published its half-yearly accounts for the period to the end of March of this year. These showed a pre-tax loss of over €4 billion, mainly due to a write-off of some of the loan book. That represented a significant deterioration in the bank's position since it was nationalised in January and its assessment has been confirmed by PricewaterhouseCoopers and subject to stress-testing similar to the exercise carried out on Bank of Ireland and AIB.

Why was that information not known in January or on 29 September last? Why was an assessment not carried out before the State committed itself? This is why the people are scared. They do not trust the Government to assess and deliver on the basis of a strict assessment and stress test.

The people have no confidence in the Government's ability to deliver a health service and neither does the Opposition. The public have lost all confidence in the ability of the Minister for Health and Children to deliver a health service. Anyone who was canvassing in the past couple of weeks knows that. The people have no confidence in the Government's ability to deliver an education service, particularly to children with special needs. They have no confidence in the Government's ability to deliver services to elderly people or to those seeking respite care or access to hospitals and various health services.

The job of the Opposition is to articulate that lack of confidence, as expressed by the people in their vote last week. The public have no confidence in the Government's ability to deliver on the housing situation. As many as 100,000 people on local authority housing lists must remain in rented accommodation for which they are paying through the nose. They have no chance of being housed. Meanwhile, 100,000 houses are locked up in the private sector, due to the effects of the housing bubble. I could go on and on.

The people have no confidence in the Government's ability to deliver anything. They said so last week. Need I mention the Ryan report in which many sections were blacked out? Could the public have confidence in that kind of nonsense? I have no confidence either.

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