Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)

I too am happy to stand here this evening in support of the motion of confidence in the Taoiseach. I do so because I am happy that the reports presented to us last week by the three experts present very serious challenges to the State and to the way that we govern the State. For once, these are challenges that will be dealt with in this House, in the Oireachtas committees and in the various institutions that will report on them.

We have already learned the lessons of the light touch regulation that have led to this situation. The appointment of Professor Patrick Honohan as Governor of the Central Bank represented the first time somebody from outside the system has come to that position. The appointment of Mr. Matthew Elderfield as Financial Regulator is also clear evidence that we are going down a different path than that pursued before. The policies pursued by the Government in the past two years, which have resulted in genuine hardship right across the country, have given us stability today and we can use that stability to grow this economy and to start creating employment for those out of work.

That stability has entered into our relationship with the Civil Service and the public service, through the acceptance of the Croke Park agreement this evening by the public services committee of ICTU. I look forward to working with Deputies and Senators on the implementation of that agreement and on the implementation and construction of the new public services board and implementation body. Many of the blockages we find in our daily lives as public representatives may be unblocked and we will be able to deliver basic entitlements to people in a better and more efficient way which respects their dignity.

The agreement was encouraged and fostered in very difficult circumstances by the Taoiseach, Deputy Brian Cowen. It was put to him by many in the House that he had destroyed the relationship with the unions that had been the foundation of so much. However, he persevered through the first half of the year to come up with an agreement that was more reflective of the economy and the times we are in that those that preceded it. We are moving forward with confidence in implementing the agreement.

The relationship to which I have referred is being changed in the context of the transformation that has happened throughout the economy since 1997. Many would ignore the changes in infrastructure and services and the changes throughout the country that were brought about by the investment and surpluses achieved during that time. We are in serious difficulties now and nobody will ignore that. However, to ignore the fact that such visible physical progress was made as well as progress in other areas is also unfair and is not true of a real debate.

We have had the standard Punch and Judy debate, with each side saying it is right and the other is wrong. Let us go forward and decide, on the basis of these reports presented to us by outsiders to the political system, that those of us in the political system can, through the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance and the Public Service make the various changes that must be made on the back of those reports so that there will be a new politics. It will be a politics that is more reflective of the pressures people are going through and of what people have gone through in the past two and a half years. It challenges all of us to change and up our game and to move away from the Punch and Judy politics we all engage in as a matter of course. That is the message of the two reports published last week as much as they contain lessons on banking and on what went wrong in the economy. It is a matter for all of us in both Houses to take that on board.

I am happy that we will take those lessons on board, and that Deputy Brian Cowen's leadership as Taoiseach is the most stable that can be provided. It is a leadership that is willing and encourages all of us to push through the tough decisions needed.

We may have introduced stability to the economy but we must continue down the road we have taken. The Government has shown it has the backbone to take those decisions and see them through. We will have no difficulty in showing the electorate that when we were challenged to take those decisions we took them in the interests of the country.

This debate and the debate on the other side of the House are overshadowed by what has happened today. The House should welcome the findings of the report into Bloody Sunday. We will have statements on it next week. Nobody in the House could have imagined when waking up this morning that we would have read some of the statements that have come from that report or heard the statements made in the House of Commons.

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