Dominic Hannigan (Labour)

We are all looking forward with anticipation and expectation to today's announcement by the Taoiseach about his plans for economic recovery. It is vital that his plans succeeds because many people depend on its success. It will be the last political and economic act of what has been a tumultuous year. In the future when historians look back, they will regard 2008 as being one of the formative years of the Irish nation. It is the year when we went from boom to bust. In early summer the Lisbon treaty referendum was lost and in September the banking crisis worsened and the economy took a nose-dive. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people are now out of work. It was against that backdrop that the Oireachtas met to discuss legislation in an all-night sitting to give guarantees to the banking system. In a spirit of co-operation, Members from all parties sat on a sub-committee to examine why the Lisbon treaty failed to be passed. Great credit must go to that sub-committee and to its chairman, Senator Paschal Donohoe.

It has been a particularly difficult year for those who have lost their jobs. They are facing a bleak Christmas and a very worrying new year. We are very grateful for the bits of good news along the way to keep us all sane.

On the political front, following a very successful conference in May, we managed to ban cluster munitions as a result of the Bill passed last week. In sport, Munster won the Heineken Cup, which cheered us all. In the arts, we saw the band, The Script, making an international breakthrough with their number one album and we saw "Once" winning an Oscar in Hollywood. These successes have helped to lift the national mood along the way——