Frances Fitzgerald (Fine Gael)

This afternoon I wish to make two points about the events of today and of the past month. Deputy Bertie Ahern has taken a marathon lap of honour to which much attention has been paid. I congratulate him on his address to the Joint Houses of the US Congress and on being the fourth Taoiseach to do so and on yesterday's opening of the Battle of the Boyne visitors' centre. As we know, Deputy Brian Cowen will announce his Cabinet later today and much attention will be given to the personalities who will make up the Government in the coming months.

I would not like the departure of the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Deputy Séamus Brennan, to go without comment or recognition of his time in Government. He is a man of great courtesy and capacity and will be a serious loss. I wish him well in his recovery from his illness and congratulate him on what he has achieved to date.

As leader of the Opposition in the Seanad, I wish to point out that the long goodbye to the Taoiseach and the anticipation of a new Government end today. After today, we must return to normal politics. We must return to tackling the challenges facing people every day, the challenges of the health service, crime, child care, education, the cost of living and quality of life, all key issues. For the past number of years we have had the programme for Government held up as what the Government is working towards, but everything has changed now and the programme can no longer take care of the challenges facing us.

The Government and the new Cabinet must recognise that tax receipts are down and the programme for Government is not being implemented. They must stop hiding behind the now defunct programme and bury it. They must now come to us with new information and a set of clear and immediate indicators of how they will shelter Ireland from the global slowdown, how they will deal with the negative equity affecting many families and young housebuyers, how they will turn the hospital situation around so that patients will no longer be afraid to go into hospital and will have renewed confidence in the health service.

In the immediate term, we must see action from the new Government on the Lisbon treaty. If we do not see a strong campaign from the Government, the treaty will be lost. Such a decision would be an assertion by the people that the Government is out of touch and has not tackled the issue coherently. I urge the Leader to bring the message to the Government that we on this side of the House want to see an active and strong Government campaign to ensure the Lisbon treaty is passed by the people. The Government will have our support on the treaty. Fine Gael has been very active in its efforts to ensure the treaty is passed.

We want to hear from the new Taoiseach and his Cabinet how they intend to deal with the critical issues I have outlined, issues faced by every family in the country on a daily basis. There is huge disappointment that the Celtic tiger has not helped people to get better hospital and education services. Those are the issues this House must discuss.

I ask the Leader to speak to the Government about doing whatever it can at European level at the Council of Ministers on the situation in Burma. It is a terrible tragedy. Some 20,000 people are known to have died and 40,000 are missing. I heard Mr. John O'Shea of GOAL speak about the difficulty GOAL is having getting aid into the country and asking the Government to use every action it can to try to get the junta in that country to allow aid in. I ask the Leader to bring the issue to the House and perhaps we could bring a motion before the House.