Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

Last Sunday, 28 November 2010, the future of the Irish people and the sovereignty of this nation was decided on behind closed doors. The deal that was announced last Sunday is a bad deal for Ireland. It has been forced on us because the Taoiseach and his fellow Ministers ran up such debt over the last ten years. Their inept supervision of the banking system, along with their negligence and arrogance, led to the collapse of that system. The Government refused to face the reality of these problems and the extent of its failures. As part of the deal, the International Monetary Fund and the EU institutions have arrived on our shores to bail out this State, for which our forefathers fought. The children of the next generation will pay for the obscene waste of money and incompetence of recent years. That will be legacy of the Fianna Fáil-Green Party Government. We have been forced to borrow billions of euro-----

See this speech in context