Liam Twomey (Fine Gael)

I second the amendment. In many of his contributions Senator Boyle asks for co-operation from this side of the House as if, in some way, we had the solution for the Government. The problem with the Government is that it clearly has not accepted the damage it has done to the economy or people's lives or that the solutions lie within itself.

We might consider a standard family income of €50,000 to €60,000 and the changes such a family has seen and will see with increased taxes, income and pension levies. If its members work in the public service they have had a public service levy. They will see increased VAT and there will even be levies on their VHI payments when legislation now going through the House is passed tomorrow. In the future there will be property taxes and changes to the children's allowance, a significant matter for middle class families who pay large mortgages, car loans and possibly credit card loans. They may have been living beyond their means just as this Government did but they have to do something serious about it. The Government, on the other hand, is doing nothing about it.

These conditions apply to everybody but it is among the middle class that the majority of floating voters are found and Fianna Fáil constantly looks to its vote. The middle class feels it has been crucified by the toxic trio of Government policy, exuberant bankers and developers who were looking to make the fastest possible buck. It is all gone now and the economy is in a mess.

Senator Boyle should stop lecturing us about what we will do and what policies we will come up with because it is becoming repetitive. The Government is failing to do its job. I shall spell it out for the Senator and have said as much before. He and his party are partners in Government. The local elections showed that the Green Party and Fianna Fáil are damned if they do and damned if they do not. They are damned if they make hard decisions and damned if they make no such decisions. Up to how, however, they have not made any decisions of any consequence and the country is not improving.

The Senator knows the deficit in public finances is in a mess. He knows many of the problems which need to be corrected have only been touched upon. He spoke about an bord snip nua which even Ministers have said they will think about over the summer. However, they will not have any discussion with members of the Opposition on whether these decisions are good or bad. The Government has run the country for the past couple of decades almost in secret. It decides that everything that happens is its responsibility and must fall to its decision. When matters were going well it was happy enough to take all the credit. Matters are not going well any longer and are in a complete mess. Look at the figures. Unemployment has reached 420,000. Subtracting what the multinationals take from it, our gross national product has contracted by 12%. Senator Boyle understands what that means. It is a disaster. All the time, our national debt increases by billions.

We have no sense, however, that the Government sees this as being the kind of crisis Members on this side of the House see it to be. Members of Government always want us to say what we would do but that is not our job. When the Government voted to elect Deputy Bertie Ahern as Taoiseach two years ago, it chose as its job to run the country for five years. It constantly claims this is its mandate but clearly refuses to accept that mandate. In the way politics is set up in this country, that mandate is such that the Green Party, Fianna Fáil and the few Independent Members they have tagged along with them will be the ones who make these decisions. They are not making them.

If it wishes, the Green Party can share that information with us and we will offer our opinion on it but it should stop treating the people stupidly by claiming we are the ones who must come up with the proposals. If the Government were to call a general election the people would weigh it up in the same way it weighed up the Green Party, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Party prior to the previous general election. We increased our number of seats by 20. The Green Party held its own and Fianna Fáil lost seats. That was an indication that change was coming. That will matter.

When the Green Party tables motions and when its Members make speeches in this House it should point out clearly what it wants to do in the coming years. It should encourage its Ministers and coalition partners to publish what is intended to be done with the information from an bord snip nua and then talk to us about the kinds of changes it wishes to make. All we will see now from Fianna Fáil and the Green Party, apart from a few leaks that will happen over the summer to try to soften up the public, is what will happen on budget day. That will be like any other budget, kept quiet until the last minute. All the Members will come into the Dáil Chamber and the budget announcements will be made. No co-operation will be asked for or expected from the Opposition. That is the way the country is being run now.

The Government should focus less on what my party will do or what the Labour Party will do and focus on what it should be doing. That it does nothing is making an unbelievable difference. I am sure Senator Boyle understands exactly where this country is going. He was a Member of the Lower House when I was and he has a fairly good grasp of economic and social policy. He has a fairly good grasp that every day, with every moment of prevarication and time wasted talking and avoiding making decisions, matters are getting worse. The reality is we are borrowing €1.5 billion every month. We will borrow another €3 billion over the summer recess merely to keep the country going as well as watching the tax take continue to decline over the same period. We will watch people losing their jobs in addition to the 420,000 who have already lost theirs.

The Government is damned in any case so let it make the decisions. There is no point in expecting to be thanked politically for making hard decisions. That never happens. The Senator knows the history books and knows this never happens when tough decisions are made. No Government has ever been thanked for making hard decisions, and Fine Gael has been part of five Governments that made tough decisions. That is a fact of life. This Government will not be thanked either. However, it will be remembered for what it does to the country and if it destroys our economy further. It may take another ten or 15 years to come out of this recession while Green Party members sit on their hands and look for somebody to blame or to make decisions for them. That will be the worst legacy for a junior coalition partner to have as it takes the pain for the sins of its senior partners.