Thomas Byrne (Fianna Fail)

The Government's amendment speaks about returning the economic, financial and political stability in the country to rebuild our international reputation. This is a much repeated mantra. I accept there was instability in the previous government. However, what have Ministers of the current Government done and how do they quantify that our reputation has been restored? What steps has the Government taken to restore it or how do they quantify how bad our reputation was? Ministers in our government had huge international stature, much greater international stature than any Minister in this Government will ever have. That is a fact, as we saw last year.

The Government has done nothing on the mortgage crisis. Even I, as a Fianna Fáil Deputy going before the electorate, hoped there would be some kind of change after the election. I hoped for the sake of the country that the new Government would do something different. However, it has not. It has stayed on the same road, but in the meantime has cynically broken a record number of promises. I will be slightly parochial and mention promises specific to County Meath, such as pylons, the regional hospital, Navan rail line, Slane by-pass, metro north and pyrite, on which nothing has been done a year into office. On a national level, there are broken promises on mortgages -----