If there is any advantage in it for Tallaght, I am prepared to wait.
The Irish people are involved in a magnificent adventure this week. They are playing host to people with disabilities from around the world and, in the process, learning, experiencing and discovering. In a world of commercialism and crass exploitation, we are learning the meanings of true competition and pure and unadulterated sport, we are experiencing the ways in which people overcome barriers to demonstrate ability above and beyond the norm, we are discovering that people with disabilities are capable of courage, grace and skill that we can only envy and we are seeing what it really means to overcome. The atmosphere surrounding the Special Olympics World Summer Games has encouraged a sense of celebration and discovery. We should be grateful for the work and effort of the organisers of the games, as their commitment and dedication to the myriad of tasks they have undertaken are lessons for us all.
Against that background, one of the most shameful things about this Government has been the mean-spirited way in which it has dealt with the issue of disability. I will return to the subject later, but it is appropriate to begin this evening by pointing out that the community that has organised the events we are witnessing and reached out to people with disabilities from all over the world deserves a Government of vision and generosity. It has, instead, been foisted with this miserable Government, which was elected on the basis of lies and deceit, is interested in power for power's sake and does not possess a shred of moral authority. It is appropriate, therefore, as the House nears its summer recess a year after Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats took office again, that it should debate how the Government parties have lived up to their promises and how citizens have benefited from their return to office.
I emphasise that the Government's performance must be compared with the promises made by the Government parties when seeking re-election. The Government's extensive back-up apparatus has made sustained and persistent efforts in recent weeks to suggest that its performance may be judged only against the programme for Government and not against the bogus promises which won it power. I do not mean to imply that the Government has honoured the programme for Government – far from it – but the electorate did not vote on the basis of the programme. Its decision was based on the very explicit commitments of Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats at election time, some of which are listed in the motion I have moved. It is not possible to exaggerate the significance for hundreds of thousands of people of commitments such as the elimination of hospital queues by 2004, the extension of medical card eligibility to 200,000 people, the recruitment of 2,000 additional gardaí and the funding of 40,000 additional child care places. Such hard commitments were pressed on the people by Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats.
When the Government started to churn out its various works of fiction in recent weeks, the Progressive Democrats Party sought to resile from any proposition that it was involved in breaking promises. Deputy Liz O'Donnell claimed that it was all the work of Fianna Fáil and said that the Progressive Democrats, as a party, tend not to make such promises. An article in The Irish Times of 5 June last dealt explicitly with the commitments made by the Progressive Democrats. I will leave this issue by mentioning that the Progressive Democrats manifesto stated that it “will increase the strength of the Garda Síochána by 2,000 members”. The Progressive Democrats, having made their share of commitments, cannot pretend that all responsibility rests with the larger Government party. There has never been an instance, in the history of the State, of political parties engaging in such a comprehensive and cynical post-election turnabout and consigning undertakings solemnly given to the political dustbin immediately after their election. A particularly central undertaking, given on behalf of the Government by the Minister for Finance, Deputy McCreevy, was that there would be no cutbacks, secret or otherwise. This was cynically advanced before polling day and contemptuously abandoned within days of the result.
The main reason why the Labour Party has put this motion before the House is because it believes it is right and appropriate that the Opposition should subject the Government to audit at the end of each year in office. This Government abhors accountability and seeks to avoid it at all costs. Its most determined campaign this year was conducted to secure the filleting of the Freedom of Information Act and its leaders' most assiduous efforts are devoted to avoiding detailed questioning in any public sphere. That includes this Chamber, sadly, in the case of both the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste.
I will not be able to refer to more than a few of this Government's depredations in the time available to me. I have had to make selections because the Government has made matters worse in the last year in almost every area of this country's economic and social life. Its only achievement is to be able to say that it has affected every walk of national life in such a short period. The tragedy is that it damages everything it touches.
The Government has shown itself to be, undoubtedly, one of the worst Ireland has ever had. In its first year in office, it has broken dozens of promises made to the electorate, attempted to distort its record in office, launched a series of savage attacks on essential elements of public spending, introduced a raft of increased and new charges and expected the most vulnerable people in society to bear the cost of its incompetent economic management. That is what this motion seeks to capture.
Many Government backbenchers fully, if privately, accept the charges and the demands contained in the Labour Party motion. Yet these Deputies will, in the end, shame themselves as democratically elected public representatives by acting as lobby fodder to support the Government amendment to the motion.
Some few on the Government benches, even office holders, have publicly in their comments and remarks, to all intents signed up for the thrust of the motion. Yet, they too will, in the end, shame themselves by also voting for the Government amendment. Among such will be Deputy Tim O'Malley of the Progressive Democrats, a Minister of State who just the other day was a loud protester at the behaviour of the Department of Education and Science, the Minister and former Minister in the case of St. Nessan's primary school in Mungret. St. Nessan's is, of course, in the Minister of State's constituency. It is a school with a complex of ancient temporary classrooms in a notorious state of disrepair. These rooms are, in his words on RTE radio, "totally unsuitable, they would not pass safety standards". He is right. I have seen this school, as it happens, having recently visited it with my colleague, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan. However, it is no worse than a number of others in respect of which similar undertakings were given.
My constituency colleague, Deputy O'Connor, is the lone Government backbencher in the House. When he was a candidate in the general election he caused a letter with the Taoiseach's imprimatur to go in the doors of every house in a large section of my constituency pledging that long-promised refurbishment work in Kingswood schools would commence immediately after the election. Nothing has happened since then. This is just one more example.
Anybody who visited St. Nessan's with Deputy O'Sullivan knows that Portakabins do not come cheap. On 8 April last in answer to a parliamentary question from my colleague, Deputy Wall, the Minister revealed that last year the rental cost of these temporary classrooms for primary schools alone was €8.4 million while the purchase cost was €17 million. There are 166 primary schools renting temporary classrooms and an unknown number have had to purchase classrooms.
I recently visited Lucan with my colleague, Senator Tuffy, to meet with local people trying to cope with the consequences for their schools of explosive local population growth arising from a flood of badly planned and poorly controlled housing developments. Such has been the uncontrolled expansion of Lucan – the largest in the country according to the census – that in recent years many families must send their children to schools outside their community. The fabric of the community is being destroyed by bad planning, the hallmark of Fianna Fáil, and inadequate resources afforded to schools.
Another example taken at random is a secondary school, Castleknock Community College. In 1998 Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats promised this school a purpose-built gym and other facilities to cope with the large number of pupils. Now, although these facilities were promised and had gone to planning and through various other steps in the Department's labyrinthine procedure for permitting building work, nothing has happened to date. In the context of the Government cutbacks in education, the school is now left in no-man's land on the waiting list of work to be completed. That scenario is repeated throughout the country.
In my constituency, Firhouse Community College is almost an identikit of what happened in the case of Castleknock Community College. Again, solemn undertakings were given by the Government. There is no Progressive Democrats candidate in the constituency since the departure of the Tánaiste into exile in Dublin Mid-West. Fianna Fáil pledged that the long-promised sports hall for Firhouse would be built. However, nothing has happened. All around the country communities have been let down by the Government in a similar fashion. Although, according to the Minister of State, Deputy O'Dea, who first made the promise to the people of Mungret in 2001 that St. Nessan's was going to be sorted out, the people who have really been let down are those in the Government. As he put it the other morning on RTE radio when being pressed on St. Nessan's: "The Government was let down because the money ran out." The money ran out, as Tommy Cooper would say, "just like that".
