Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)

I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak to the motion. I have no doubt a general election is needed. Despite the claims made by Ministers in recent days, there is an appetite for a general election. This message was driven home loud and clear in recent weeks as we campaigned and canvassed in our constituencies and, more important, last Friday when people went to the polling stations and cast their votes resoundingly against the Government. Looking across the city of Dublin it is clear the Government no longer enjoys the confidence or trust of people. The Green Party has been left without councillors across the city, while the Fianna Fáil Party on the south side of the city has been left with a single councillor to represent the party on Dublin City Council. It is clear the Government does not have a mandate for the actions it has taken over the past 12 months and has lost the confidence of the electorate.

It is said that delay is the deadliest form of denial. Delay has become the cornerstone of this Government's activity in the past 12 months. To date, we have had four attempts to sort out the public finances, none of which has been successful. We will face into an autumn of discontent which will probably precipitate another early budget and may well lead to a general election, regardless of whether the Government wants one.

It is interesting that Government Deputies have made little attempt to defend the Government or its record during this debate. The focus of their contributions has been almost exclusively on attacking the Opposition. The Government clearly realises its number is up and the only course of action available to it is to try to create factions and sow divisions among the Opposition parties. The Fine Gael Party is a distinctive party with its own values and policies and will fight the next election on that basis. The Opposition parties are united, however, on the need to have the Fianna Fáil Party removed from office on the basis that it has mishandled and abused political office for much too long. I will not bother to comment on the Green Party and the remnants of the Progressive Democrats Party as they are not relevant. It is high time Fianna Fáil was removed from office. In that, Fine Gael and the Labour Party are united.

While speakers from the Government side have made a number of claims during this debate, the claim trotted out and repeated ad nauseam by Cabinet Ministers and others on the Government benches is that the national economic crisis is simply and solely due to the international recession. We all know this is not the case and the Government, through the pursuit of flawed policies for at least 12 years, first allowed a property bubble to develop and inflate and then fuelled it with further tax breaks for developers, pumping it up further and further until it burst. It then tried to wash its hands of the problem by blaming it on an international recession, which is a fallacy.

On the Government's approach to the public finances in recent years, I have repeatedly stated that the benchmarking process has been nothing short of a national fraud. Its outcome was arrived at illegitimately and the process was conducted behind closed doors and was not subject to freedom of information legislation. In addition, the chairman of the commission examining benchmarking was forced to resign in exasperation. Instead of tackling the crisis in the public sector and having the backbone and courage to reform the public sector, the Government simply threw more and more hard-earned taxpayers' money at the problem. It was this approach that caused the immense hole in our public finances.

Unfortunately, I am running out of time. I hope I will have an opportunity to raise many other issues I wish to address during the Private Members' debate this evening.

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