David Cullinane (Sinn Fein)

Yesterday the Taoiseach and Tánaiste published a report, which reviewed the Government's first year in office. It is only fair that we judge the Government fairly over the past year. I would benchmark the Government's performance against what its parties promised they would do in their pre-election manifestos. They promised not to put one red cent into the banks and not to pay back bondholders unless aggressive burden sharing was agreed. In November 2011 some €700 million was paid back to bondholders, €1.1 billion was paid back in January and €3.1 billion will be paid back at the end of this month. They promised to reduce the live register by 100,000 in their first two years in office. We have as many people out of work now as we had when the Government came into office and we now hear about proposed job losses in AIB. I come from the south east whose unemployment rate of 18% is the highest in the country. My city, Waterford, took very heavy hits with job losses and those jobs have not been replaced. The Government promised to deal with upward-only rents and mortgage distress. There were red-line issues coming from the Labour Party on child benefit and college fees. In its first budget, it caved in on those two promises.