Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, United Left) | Oireachtas source

The latest polls place Fine Gael at 19% and the Labour Party at 6%. We can compare this to the Red C poll of February 2011, when Fine Gael was at 40% and the Labour Party was at 20%. The Government is now as unpopular as the Fianna Fáil and Green Party Government which presided over the bank guarantee, the bank bailout, the economic crash and the troika bailout. That is some achievement.

The Taoiseach indicated he would overhaul the flawed bailout plans of the previous Government but he has done nothing of the sort and instead implemented it in full. The Government has defended bankers and the wealthy while imposing austerity on those who can least afford it. We are still waiting for the promised deal on the bank bailout, which is not even mentioned at this stage.

The Labour Party is the party of broken promises. We heard of "Labour's way or Frankfurt's way" but this quickly became Fine Gael's way. There were Tesco-style advertisements indicating that "every little hurts" produced by the Labour Party before the election. These argued that Fine Gael would increase VAT by 2% but if people voted for the Labour Party, that would be stopped. Fine Gael was supported by the Labour Party in introducing that VAT increase. The Labour Party argued it would stop Fine Gael cutting child benefit but it has supported those cuts in this Dáil.

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