Frank Feighan (Fine Gael)

The Minister of State should instantly sack whatever Sir Humphrey wrote the speech he delivered today. It states: "With this parallel approach, the OPW will be a decentralisation champion." There are no champions emerging from this decentralisation report, only chumps. The people are annoyed. I am annoyed because I took the report as a commitment last December. Fool as I am in opposition, I took it that this Government meant to deliver 10,000 jobs. It did not. The Minister of State said the plan was ill thought out by that great former Minister for Finance, Deputy McCreevy, who was extradited to Europe.

This Government is divided on decentralisation and can do nothing to whitewash the situation or put a gloss on it. The people have been deceived; we have been deceived. These are not the political messages I want to send to constituents. Senator Leyden and the Minister of State know that, as do I. It is a shame that this Government should carry on a deception like this. It will go down in history as one of the greatest deceptions of the Irish people.