Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

That money would transform schools across the country and could be spent in so many different ways. Yet it was a piddling sum according to the Minister, or just petty cash. The Taoiseach has treated taxpayers' money as petty cash and he has the temerity now to seek confidence from us.

The Taoiseach spoke earlier about policies he has delivered and said that the Government is now on the right course. How do we know we are on the right course? Is it because The Wall Street Journal tells us? How do we know that he is getting good advice or implementing it? Why should we trust or have confidence that the people who have blown the boom will restore it back to some degree of credibility?

The Government Deputies will escape in four or five weeks into the summer, and I can see in all their faces and in the weariness of the responses to questions that they cannot wait. However, the people will not go away. The Taoiseach does not even have the courage to call three by-elections. As he does not have that courage, the children of this republic are not getting the referendum to which they are entitled. This is happening not because of legal complexities or because the Government cannot afford the referendum, but because Government Deputies are so scared of their political futures with the result that children of this nation are not being cherished equally. They are not being cherished equally due to mean and miserable political cowardice that prevents the Taoiseach from going to the country.

The republican Oliver Cromwell gave advice to a decrepit, corrupt and now defunct government and Parliament in Westminster many years ago. I offer it to the Taoiseach: "In the name of God, go".

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