Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

The people are perfectly free to comment on the exercise of that mandate at the expiration of the appropriate constitutional terms. That is the position. We live in a representative democracy. The leader of the Labour Party suggested today that we do not, that we should have a Government by opinion poll, that mandates expire on the basis of opinion polls and that the will of the people is that this Government should leave office. The will of the people was expressed in May 2007 and the Fine Gael Party and the Labour Party were incapable of devising a cohesive programme to persuade the people on that occasion to give my party a break after two terms in office.

See this speech in context