Paschal Donohoe (Fine Gael)

The formation of dole queues was something we were expecting and something the Government was doing its best to plan for. The formation yesterday morning of food queues in our city, the length of those food queues and the despair of the people on them is another sign and a message to all of us that we must change the way we are doing business and respond to the extent of the crisis.

Many people in recent months have called for national government. It is now increasingly clear that what we need is not national government but rational government, where the Government spells out what it will do to tackle the problem our country is acing. In recent weeks, Fine Gael has made two very strong contributions to that debate. Last night, we debated our proposals on job creation, one of the two crises facing our country, and we outlined yesterday our approach to dealing with the national finances.

I concur with all my colleagues in stating that social welfare payments should not be touched for people who are going on to those payments for the first time. However, we need to be clear that what we are saying is that €3 to €4 of every €10 of Government expenditure will not be touched as a result of that decision. That will mean that for the other €6 to €7 spent, we will need to make the tough decisions we have shied away from making in the past ten to 15 years. My party yesterday spelled out what those decisions are, how much they will cost and what we would do. I want the Deputy Leader to respond on that issue.

On Sunday afternoon, a raid on the road next to mine by gardaí and armed forces discovered material for pipe bombs. Three arrests were made of people allegedly involved in subversive republican activity. This brought home to me very clearly one simple fact. We have taken our eye off the ball in terms of the threat that is posed to our national security. In the two years I have been in this House, we have had only one debate on Northern Ireland, two at the most. We need to bring this back to the top of our political agenda. We have talked about the threats to our economic security but we need to now talk about the threats to our national security. That needs be debated here more than it has been in the past.

I will conclude with the fact that the national Carers Association is organising a demonstration outside Leinster House this morning. I have been very careful in what I have said so far to acknowledge that very tough choices will have to be made in how we spend our money, but at the very least, let us publish a strategy to outline what we would do differently to help the people who need care most, even if we all know the money will not be there to do as much as we would all like to do.