Jerry Buttimer (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I remind the Deputies opposite that this Government will last its full term. We will not be like the Green Party and Fianna Fáil and we will not flake on the Irish people. If I was to arrive in this Chamber from another planet and read Deputy Michael McGrath's motion, I would have said "fair play" because everything to which he aspires is what the Government is doing and everything he writes down is what we are all trying to achieve. Then I suddenly remembered that I am living in Ireland where the Deputy's party created a bubble for 14 years and the party is over. The carnival is gone and the Irish people are left with the legacy of its reckless behaviour. Rather than debating a Private Members' motion here, we should be before a tribunal with the 14 or 15 members of the previous Government before it justifying their actions because they behaved irresponsibly on behalf of the Irish people. They betrayed the trust of the people and have the audacity to come in here and chastise the Government which inherited a mess, acknowledges the difficulties people face and is trying to get us back to sovereignty. I appreciate Deputy Michael McGrath's motivation because he is a decent person but the party he represents is not. Its policies have made our country the way it is and the people must never be allowed to forget that.

In saying that, some of the speakers opposite who are not in the Chamber are pursuing an agenda that would have got our country into even more trouble and are still cheerleading via the column inches of certain newspapers which do not deserve to be mentioned in this House. What we need to do is to make sure that the family home is never repossessed and taken away and that we preserve and protect that family home for decent men and women.

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