Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate everybody who was successful in the recent elections and commiserate with those who were not. There is a trauma in losing an election and in my area, one man lost by the swing of one vote after two and half recounts. It is very difficult for him and his family to deal with that. Much has been said about the leadership of the Labour Party and how Sinn Féin performed but it is time somebody mentioned the leadership of Fianna Fáil and our organisation throughout the country. A major marker has been put down for the future revival of our party, and this is a very important staging-post in our renewal. We are the leading party in the country at local authority level and we have the majority in many of the councils in the country. We are getting this back slowly but surely because we have proven to be an Opposition party of responsibility.

Now that we have so many Sinn Féin councillors and anti-austerity candidates - fair play to them for being elected fairly and squarely - I challenge them to step up to the mark. They should not sit back in Kerry, Cork, Dublin or Galway and wait for Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour to put together a majority group with the responsibility of running a council for the next five years.

It is time to step up to the mark and get involved, to take it on and pass a budget for the people and stop fooling them that they will get everything for nothing.

The Leader will be delighted to hear what I have to say as I am sure he thought I was a broken gramophone record the number of times I raised the state of Charleville railway station and the fact that elderly people have to climb a rickety steel stairs to get from one side of the platform to the other. I came to Dublin by train this morning and noted that work has just commenced on a state-of-the-art, spanking new lift for the public.