Ciarán Cannon (Fine Gael)

I did not intend to speak this morning on the Order of Business until I heard Senator Hanafin make the same hypocritical and cynical call for patriotism which his colleagues have been making for the past few months. It started with the Minister for Finance, Deputy Brian Lenihan, during his Budget Statement who was followed by the Tánaiste, Deputy Mary Coughlan, last week. They have been calling on hard-pressed families to voluntarily subject themselves to a higher tax regime by not travelling to the North to buy groceries. The Government was elected to govern. The mistakes made in the past six months have not been made by families but rather by a Government which imposed a VAT rate and acknowledged in March that this was a significant mistake. It has refused to address the very high costs associated with doing business. We now have the third highest energy costs in Europe. I ask the Government to cease from asking the people to rectify its mistakes and to begin to do what it was elected to do, that is, to govern.