Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail)

He was lambasted in the media and by all the smart commentators. That was a sad day because patriotism is something to which we should all aspire. I respect and like to see a senior politician calling for patriotism. It is not a dirty word. It might have been sullied at one time by people who thought it meant blowing people up, but, to me, patriotism is trying to reach out to help one's fellow citizens, whether it is at community level, in a local football club or, in this case, in trying to sort out the ship of state.

Harold Macmillan once famously said to the people of England: "You've never had it so good." Our problem is that for the past ten years we have never had it so good and there is a young generation who, to a certain extent, have had it soft compared to my generation and certainly the generations that preceded mine. In every problem, there is hope, and in every difficulty, something good can emerge. Whether it is in the spiritual sense or in looking for value for money and realising the value of a euro, which perhaps many of us did not do for the past ten years, all of these changes are positive. If times are tough now, let us not be looking back at what happened in the past ten years.