Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

When sacrifice is needed, it starts at the top and not with the blind, the carers or the poor. If people give us the most precious possessions they have - their trust and their votes - we will have a duty to respond in kind. With our plan, we will replace old Government cynicism with new Government compassion, and old Government indifference with new Government insights. We will replace the old dysfunction and disorder at the heart of Government with a Government that holds the hearts and the needs of the people within its own heart - a Government that will show understanding of the fragile and shattered lives of the many thousands of people out there for whom politics has not worked. What people need is reassurance that politics can and does work. What they need now is leadership, to point the direction to a new future with a higher quality of personal and working life. I know I can offer them that. What they do not want is more of the same clichés, more of the banal, the reported and the tired.

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