Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

The results of Friday last's elections have been very good for the parties opposite and I congratulate them on their success. I especially congratulate Deputy Kenny on his success in rebuilding his party after seven years in a political wilderness. It is a political achievement, but it is important to remind ourselves that the questions before the electorate on Friday last were the elections of councillors, MEPs to the European Parliament and in the case of this House, two seats which had become vacant. That is what the people voted on and the Opposition parties won handsomely.

However, the people were not deciding on who should run this country. They have yet to decide whether or not they want Deputy Kenny as Taoiseach. That was not put to the people on Friday last and their judgement on this matter in 2012 remains a matter of conjecture.

We must remember that until we implemented reform and gave a constitutional status to local government the common reaction of Governments to local elections was to postpone them. Deputy Kenny speaks now of his pride in serving as Minister for Tourism and Trade in an earlier Government. He fails to mention that as a member of that Government he decided to cancel the local elections scheduled for 1996 and 1997. As a statement of his faith in democracy this speaks louder than any of his words in this debate.

It is plain that the electorate is very angry with the Government and I understand why. People have lost jobs. They have lost savings. They have lost pensions. Living standards have fallen. Parents are worried about the future of their children. These are the human manifestations of the worst global recession since the Great Depression eight decades ago.

I do not suggest that all of our difficulties are down to global factors. I am well aware of the contribution our housing bubble has made to our economic downturn. As I stated previously, with the benefit of hindsight, more should have been done to contain the housing market which was fuelled by very low interest rates and the ready availability of credit. I readily acknowledge that and so has the Taoiseach. However, I am nauseated by the dishonesty of an Opposition that time and again courted the electorate with its calls for the abolition of stamp duty, effectively the only control mechanism we had on the property market.

I heard Deputy Coveney condemn the previous Government for profligacy during its term of office. In response to Budget 2006, Deputy Kenny stated that his biggest regret about the budget was that it did not give the people enough. In response to Budget 2007, Deputy Bruton criticised the modesty of the increase in child benefit and the budget for social housing. On Budget 2008, Fine Gael was still demanding that we spend more. Deputy Mitchell expressed bitter disappointment that the funding for arts organisations had been cut.

Nothing has changed. The debate that has taken place in this House over the past two days has been a sham. Having put down its motion of no confidence in a blaze of publicity, Fine Gael simply went through the cliché-ridden motions joined, on this occasion, by a reluctant Labour Party. Is it any wonder the public is cynical?

Nothing we have heard from the Opposition suggests any engagement with the enormous difficulties facing this country and our people. There is a €20 billion hole in our public finances. That is the reality. It is crazy for Deputies to come into this House, one by one, punching in the slots, decrying every effort the Government has made to control spending. Deputy Gilmore condemned the income levies and the increase in class sizes as if it was some piece of optional mendacity on the part of the Government without any reference to how we might meet the cost of education and our public services. In an hysterical contribution, Deputy O'Dowd launched a tirade of criticism about cutbacks in the budget of the road safety campaign. On what planet does the Opposition live?

Deputy Bruton referred earlier to his party's suggestions on how to respond to the economic crisis which he stated were, by definition, rejected by this government. That is not the case. I welcomed the documents at the time of their publication. I agreed with many of his suggestions and they formed part of the supplementary budget. However, the problem is that some of Deputy Bruton's suggestions were subsequently disowned by his own colleagues. Deputy Bruton proposed the emergency suspension of non-priority capital projects in the areas of local roads and social housing. In the supplementary budget, we duly made those savings and in no time there were two outraged press releases from Deputy O'Dowd, the transport spokesman, and Deputy Terence Flanagan on the social housing issue all, of course, of which were just in time for the local elections.

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