Liam Twomey (Fine Gael)

History is repeating itself with this Fianna Fáil Administration leaving an unbelievable mess to be cleaned up after them.

Fine Gael is the only party that can get the country working again. We want to enable people who can work to secure the jobs they deserve. However, widows, those with disabilities and the elderly need the protection of the State. There is a clear difference between people who can work and those who are not in a position to work and the Government has not made that distinction. It has reduced social welfare payments to widows and people with disabilities and it has hit carers hard. These people look after sick or ill relatives 24-7. Everybody deserves access to good health care and an education but Fianna Fáil has failed to outline a policy, which is why we are in the mess we are in. Fianna Fáil is always working out the quickest buck it can make for political advantage and that is why we are where we are.

Who would have thought in 2006 that we would be in this position today? I recall debating the Finance Bill that year in the Lower House with former Minister of State, Tom Parlon, who was laughing because people had second and third houses. Everybody was flying it. At the time I tried to explain to him that the personal debt burden on young couples was making them feel like hamsters on a treadmill but he thought it was funny because his buddies were making millions of euro at the time and they thought everybody was having as good a time as themselves. People were not and, because of the failure of this and previous Governments, the people on the treadmill are finding it harder to survive. The Minister is correct that we must look to the future. If we do not get it right, there could be pressure on pension payments and on sustaining State pensions and public sector pay over the next number of years. No one should believe, like Fianna Fáil did, that everything cannot change detrimentally. The party lived in a bubble and believed something would be around the corner to get us out of the mess. Ministers failed to deal with the problem as it was developing. That is what we need to do to make hard decisions quickly and we need to be firm in making them.

I fully agree there is a need to restore confidence and to give people hope again. Someone described the sterling performance of Fine Gael's finance spokesperson, Deputy Noonan, as that of a man who had found his mojo again. Fine Gael wants to help people to find their mojo again. We can have confidence in ourselves that we can emerge from this and we can give hope to the people over the next few years. We all have the experience and ability to turn this around. I agree with the comments of Government Members but, unlike them, I am passionate about this and I am not just saying it. We can turn things around and make this a better country again. I hope to God that when the people go out to vote, they will have this at the back of their mind too.