Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

In Government over the past five years, the Labour Party succeeded at a very difficult time in this country's history in making Ireland a better place, economically and socially - not the best place because we still have to get there. That is, we hope, what some of these discussions are about.

We entered coalition in the full knowledge of how difficult things would be because our country was in a perilous state.

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