Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We have a track record with the troika of delivering on every promise the Government made to the troika. Our reputation was rubbish as a nation internationally when we came into office. Among the many big jobs we had was to build our reputation so that people could trust us. The two things we said is that we would not over-promise and we would not under-deliver in what we undertook to do. We have reached all our targets. We have delivered upon 190 individual commitments in the troika programme, many of them involving substantial bodies of legislation.

I am mindful of what Deputy Broughan said, that people need a break. We must have a horizon that gets us out of this crisis. People want to know that there is hope. That is what we are about now. The bulk of the adjustments have been made - painful, difficult and awful for many people that it was. Let us look forward now to growth, job creation and jobs investment. Let us unite with those who had a strategy of denial on the means to that end on the next phase. Although there is some way to go yet, and there is pain involved – often the last 20% of any journey is the most difficult - when we get beyond the rebalancing we have within sight the prospect of exiting the troika deal, of growth and job creation in our economy. Let us work in tandem to achieve that.

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