Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

-----but with one major difference - the Labour Party and Fine Gael did not even try to implement their promises. Year after year, Deputies who now lecture us, all from the Government benches, were on their feet demanding more tax cuts and more spending.  It is quite striking that in their recent appearances before the banking inquiry the leaders of Fine Gael and the Labour Party could not find anything wrong with their own policies or priorities before the financial crisis. All that the parties on the left are doing today is copying the Kenny-Gilmore model; therefore, a little less of the smug sanctimony would be in order.

As it comes to the end of a five-year term, the Government is distinguished by the fact that it has never produced a long-term statement of economic policy.  It has maintained a fiscal plan it once attacked as unacceptable and has produced a mountain of self-serving economic commentary, but it has never set out a vision for the future of the economy and the society we want it to support. The capital investment programme is a loose collection of projects thrown together with no sense of vision and no clear objectives.

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