Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

This debate is about the future. It is about rolling up our sleeves and getting on with the task of rebuilding our economy, using the bricks and mortar of jobs, competitiveness, innovation and trade. More than that, however, it is about the kind of country we want to hand on to our children. The programme for Government agreed between the Labour Party and Fine Gael is a plan that draws on the best of both parties, united in our commitment to bring fresh ideas, new energy and renewed hope to the leadership of our country. It is the pledge of a national Government united in the national interest. This is a programme that is shaped by the bitter lessons of the past. I reminded Members this recession is the second time in a generation that Ireland has been brought to the brink of disaster by political recklessness, mismanagement and greed.

It is the commitment of the Labour Party that never again will Ireland be brought so low by those entrusted with the privilege of governing or entrusted with our financial institutions. That is why at the centre of this programme is the most comprehensive agenda for reform ever put to the Irish people. The reforms begin with the banks, tearing up the blank cheque policy on banking that has undermined our very sovereignty and clearing out, once and for all, any board member of a State-guaranteed bank that presided over casino style lending. The reforms will shine a light on the business of government. This Government will enact a package of reforms that extend the right to freedom of information, protect whistle blowers wherever they expose wrongdoing and register political lobbyists for the first time. The reforms will take up where Labour left off in 1997, when it introduced limits on electoral spending for the first time. To break the link between big money and politics, allowable donations from private individuals will be drastically reduced and corporate donations banned outright. The reforms will put an end to the corporate cronyism that has seen Ireland's name dragged through the mire in capital cities around the world. This Government will make good corporate governance the law rather than an optional extra. In my role as Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, it will be my personal mission to restore Ireland's international reputation and repair our relationship with our European Union partners. That work has already begun, in my own case with the meeting of EU Foreign Ministers last weekend, together with the Taoiseach's meeting with Heads of State in Brussels and the meetings attended by the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan. When the Irish people voted on 25 February, they voted not only to consign to history the old politics and the old warped priorities of the past but also for a strong and stable, but also balanced and fair, Government. None of us is under any illusion about the crisis facing our country. We have seen it first hand in the devastation of a family hit by unemployment, where months of joblessness have turned into years. We have heard it in the voices of parents of young people forced to emigrate, who fear that their grandchildren will be strangers. We have witnessed it in the boarded up shops and businesses in every town in every corner of Ireland. None of us on this side of the House is under any illusion about the difficult path ahead or the hard choices that will have to be made but from the very beginning of this economic crisis Labour's commitment – a commitment that goes to the heart of who we are as a party – was that the choices would be fair. That commitment is reflected in the programme for Government. Those most at risk of poverty will not be made to suffer further and family incomes will be protected. However, there will also be a strongly enforced minimum effective tax rate of 30% for high earners, so that even those with the best accountants must pay a fair contribution. This will be a Government with no tolerance for tax exiles who have an À la carte approach to the duties and obligations of Irish citizenship.

Fairness is about sharing the burden of Ireland's recovery in a way that we, as neighbours, as colleagues and as a community, can live with, but more than that, it is about the fabric of our society. It is about who we are as a nation. Nowhere are a nation's values more starkly laid out than in how it treats its elderly, its sick and its children. That is why this Government has, for the first time, a full Minister for Children. It is committed, also for the first time, to ending Ireland's two-tier health system, because it is simply wrong that a person's income rather than medical need determines when and where he or she is treated. In addition, it will make literacy a national cause because no child should leave an Irish school unable to read and write.

I make no apologies for the ambitions laid out in the programme for Government. They are achievable; more than that, they are essential. A country is not an economy. A country is her people, and no bank should take precedence over a child's education or the good health of its citizens. The ambitions and objectives of this programme are achievable because it puts jobs first. I have made clear since 2008 that neither the fiscal crisis nor the banking crisis can be solved unless we get people back to work and our economy growing again. We can and will work our way out of this crisis. We can and will build up our economy again.

Success for this Government is not a return to the unsustainable casino economy of the past. Success will be an economy that is grounded in developing new products and new markets to sell them in. Success will be a workforce that is supported in gaining skills that match the jobs of today and tomorrow, because those skills are a person's best insurance against long-term unemployment. Success will be an economy in which Irish businesses, creating Irish jobs, are given the support they need to grow; in which our competitive advantage in food, tourism or education is sharpened by innovation, technology and new trade opportunities; and in which new opportunities are actively sought out. For example, tomorrow in New York, as part of an official St. Patrick's Day visit, I will be attending a technology innovation event, organised by Enterprise Ireland and Bank of America, at which 20 Irish high-tech companies will meet some of the leading technology companies in the US. This will be the beginning of a new mandate for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to actively foster Ireland's trade relations.

Getting people back to work, changing our political system, fixing our public finances through a fair and balanced approach - that is what the Irish people elected the Labour Party and Fine Gael to do and, with a national effort and with the goodwill and support of our fellow citizens, that is what we will do. We cannot do otherwise. The stakes are too high and our country's situation too grave. I have no doubt that in the months and years to come, there will be occasions on which it will be extremely difficult to be sitting on the Government benches. There will be some difficult days, days that will test our resolve and that of our supporters. The message for both our supporters and our critics is that the job of this Government, and any Government that has the privilege to serve, is to hand on to our children a country that is in a better position than when we found it. That will be our guiding principle. That be the measure of our success, and the Government cannot afford to fail.

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