Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail)

If it is doing well, we will applaud it. I will admit to anybody that progress is being made in certain areas of government, particularly the agriculture industry. I have no major fault to find with the way the Government is approaching budgetary reform and trying to get us out of our economic difficulty. Having said that, its agriculture policy is based completely on the Food Harvest 2020 programme that was developed by the former Minister, Deputy Smith. Equally, its fiscal policies are very much based on the policies it lambasted when we tried to pursue them under the former Taoiseach, Brian Cowen.

I am amazed by how quickly the Government has become disconnected as arrogance has crept in. People said we were arrogant when we had been there for a long time. This Government has only been in office for a year, but the same thing is being said. Last week, it was unable to produce a Minister to enable this debate to take place. It was shameful. The fiasco at the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform took place in the same week. Despite its huge majority in both Houses, the Government was unable to secure a majority at that forum. The members of the Government need to get real. They should look into themselves as well. We will help them as much as we can.

One or two areas that are of interest to me have not been mentioned yet. When the Government was elected, it made a huge issue of electoral reform. It said it would reform the Dáil, abolish the Seanad and reorganise local government. We are still waiting for all of that. Dáil reform seems to be melting down to a reduction of six in the number of Deputies. Talk about labouring to produce a mouse.