Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

I respect Parliament and our constitutional role. The Government got its mandate from this House and it is to the House that it is answerable. Some regard the tabling of a confidence motion as politics as usual, to borrow the Taoiseach's phrase. That is to misunderstand the role of Parliament and its Members. We are the people's representatives. We must be the people's voice. The people have spoken, not in an opinion poll published last week but on every street corner and in every workplace, dole queue, shop, factory and home throughout the land. The people have no confidence in the Government and they want rid of it. Despite the bravado performance of the Minister, Fianna Fáil, the Green Party and the Independents, Deputies know the people want rid of them. I do not need to make the case to indict the Government. In the minds of the people, the case has already been made and the decision arrived at.

It is, however, galling to listen to the rewriting of history by the Taoiseach. He insults the people's intelligence. His Government's case would be better served if genuine remorse for the lives so grievously wounded by his policies had been expressed. I refer to the quarter of a million men and women added to the list of the unemployed since the last election, the thousands of young people in negative equity, who will spend the rest of their working lives, if they are in work, paying for overpriced houses and the thousands of Irish men and women who will follow these debates from Australia, Canada or England, a plague we thought we had overcome.

The Taoiseach, tellingly, said that when it came to including subordinated debt holders in the bailout, anything short of a comprehensive simple-to-understand concept might cause confusion when the markets opened. Unfortunately, the markets required no such simple-to-understand bailout for burdened mortgage holders saddled with disastrous debt.

We need a change. We need a new Government with new policies. We will lay them out for the Minister if he wants to read them. My party leader laid out some of them. Our plan for a new strategic investment bank was comprehensively laid out. A jobs fund was comprehensively explained. A package for training, upskilling and job placement was published 18 months ago. We plan a new approach to healthcare involving universal health insurance, abandonment of the disastrous privatisation co-location policy and reform of the monster that is the HSE. We have presented a programme for public life and the public service, and so much more.

Confidence never comes from knowing all the answers. It comes from being open to all the questions. The Government is closed to all views but its own. It has led us to ruin and no one outside the Government's ranks believes it has the capacity to lead the country to a better place. The destroyers cannot suddenly become the rescuers. A Government mandate is not frozen in time, as the Taoiseach seems to think. On the historic day when the long-awaited Saville report is published, the responsibility of the House and of each of its Members to hold decision makers accountable is clear and inescapable. If we claim to represent all the people, our duty is to vote no confidence.

Sometimes the national interest is so clear that no other interest - personal, party or any other - is relevant. This is one such time. The members of the Government know they have lost the confidence of the people. It is our duty to reflect the people's will.

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