It seems as if the Progressive Democrats has moved into primary position today. This is the time of year in many parts of the world where people look at their lives and examine what it is we have done and what it is we have failed to do. The Tánaiste is in the right place at the right time. Deputy Rabbitte commented yesterday that the Taoiseach's performance might be the last time he took leaders' questions from that position. It might be more relevant in the Tánaiste's case.

I would like to ask him about a number of broken promises. I could mention the promise to end hospital waiting lists by 2004, or the promise to spend taxpayers' money wisely, when the country was given electronic machines and PPARS. I could mention the broken promises in the Tánaiste's own portfolio, where, under his watch, murder is up by 43%, gun crime is up by 39% and rape is up by 25%.

Wow.

The only thing going down seems to be the detection rates. The Tánaiste pointed to an end to the revolving door system in prisons, yet 3,000 prisoners were let out of jail early in 2006. I could ask him about all those promises, but I will not.

The Standing Order allows for one question on a topical issue.

Tá sé ag teacht. I want to ask the Tánaiste about the biggest promise he made. This time five years ago, he gingerly climbed up a ladder on a lamppost in Ranelagh and said "Single party Government? No thanks." It was one of the pictures of the decade. Will the Tánaiste outline what exactly he has done to prevent single party Government, given that there is an endless list of broken promises in which he was involved?

I am deeply grateful to the Deputy for not asking all the other questions for which I was prepared. I will answer the question for which I am totally unprepared, which is about what I have done to prevent single party Government. The people of Ireland chose the Government on the last occasion, not me. The people of Ireland will have the opportunity in the coming months to choose another Government.

They will choose it again.

Allow the Tánaiste to speak.

Just like on the last occasion, I am absolutely confident that they will take a long, hard look at those benches and say "No thanks".

They will say "Go now".

Deputy Kenny will not be in a position to put questions to either the Taoiseach or myself after the election not because he will be on this side of the House, but because of other events.

Is that a punch line?

People sometimes forget the situation that existed when the Deputy and a number of others around him were sitting at the Cabinet, while Deputy Rabbitte was sitting at the high chair of the Cabinet table as a half Minister.

He was getting his Liga.

Unemployment was 10.6%——

And coming down.

——and it drove thousands of people to the unemployment exchanges every week. That rate of unemployment toppled governments across western Europe.

Is it in order to tell lies?

We created 1,000 jobs per week.

That is the rate of unemployment and underperformance——

Deputy Stagg is not entitled to make any remarks, but he will have to withdraw the word "lies".

I asked a question.

You must withdraw the word "lie" unequivocally.

I did not use the word "lie". I was asking you a question, a Cheann Comhairle.

You did use the word. I am asking you to withdraw——

I was asking you a question about whether it is in order for the Tánaiste to tell lies in the House.

Does the Deputy want to leave the House? You will withdraw the word "lies".

I know you do not like the word "lie", but is it in order to tell lies?

The Deputy will withdraw the word unequivocally.

I did not accuse anybody of anything.

Are you withdrawing it?

What do you mean? I asked you a question and I am entitled to do so. Is the Tánaiste telling lies?

No, you are not entitled to intervene. You are not entitled to accuse any Member of this House of telling lies.

What must I withdraw?

You used the phrase "telling lies" and I ask you to withdraw that, Deputy.

I did not. I asked you a question.

I am asking you to withdraw the allegation that a Member was telling lies.

What do you mean? I made no allegation.

You did.

I asked you a question, namely if it is in order for the Tánaiste to tell lies in the House.

That is an allegation that he was telling lies.

It is not. It is a question addressed to you.

You will have to leave the House if you do not withdraw it.

Must I leave the House because I asked a question?

You made an allegation and you will have to leave the House.

You are being stupid, if you do not mind me saying so. I withdraw the word "lie".

The Deputy will leave the House.

I withdraw the word "lie".

Right. He has withdrawn the word "lie".

If the people of Ireland want a demonstration of how poor a Government consisting of the parties opposite would be, they only have to look at that performance. Arrogance, deceit and incompetence all rolled up in one.

The Tánaiste is merely a mudguard for Fianna Fáil.

The Deputy raised the question of the achievements of the partners in Government. I remind the Deputy of something before I go on to our achievements. This is a special year.

We do not want a history lesson from the Tánaiste.

It is the year in which Deputies Kenny and Rabbitte collectively will be 50 years sitting in this House. I have attended meetings throughout the country and asked audiences to name one achievement by either Deputy at any time in those 50 years. Nobody can give me an answer.

The Tánaiste has never managed to be re-elected.

He will be climbing up the poles again soon.

Not merely are they an underachieving combination but they have no achievements to their name.

The Tánaiste is ranting.

What do the focus groups say about the Tánaiste?

When asked on RTE radio last Sunday what he could point to in his career in politics that was an achievement for the Irish people, Deputy Kenny said he had improved the St. Patrick's Day parade.

He kept it on the same date.

If we had to wait 20 years for that, God knows how long we would have to wait for any other achievement.

The Tánaiste is hallucinating again, it is a serious condition.

Perhaps Members of the Fine Gael Party will allow their leader to submit his question without interruption.

I am glad of the history lesson from the Tánaiste. In his previous political life, he was special adviser to a former Taoiseach, although he might not use that term. We could talk about what happened in the 1980s, or even the 1970s and 1960s.

The time that Fine Gael doubled the national debt.

Fianna Fáil trebled it.

That is irrelevant to where we are now. The Tánaiste is the deputy leader of the Government. As such, he is partly responsible for the 40,000 operations that were cancelled in the past two years.

Hear, hear.

He is partly responsible for the 29,000 people who cannot meet their consultants because of endless waiting lists. He is partly responsible for the length of accident and emergency waiting times. He is partly responsible for the failure of the Government to reduce class sizes, even though the Minister for Education and Science knows that more than 100,000 children are in classes of 30 and more. He is partly responsible for bringing in the cross-compliance form for farmers, which has 1,460 boxes to be ticked.

Meanwhile, the Minister of State, Deputy Parlon, crows in Portlaoise about all the things he has done and will do. That is the type of nonsense the Progressive Democrats speak in this House, giving us their legal lessons from the Four Courts. The Tánaiste is obviously worried and desperate if he is asking questions about Fine Gael at meetings throughout the State. I do not know where these public meetings take place because there is no record of any of them.

The Fine Gael Party is holding séances in the evenings.

In the midst of the Taoiseach's difficulties last year, it was the Tánaiste who said behind his hand to him that they had managed to get through it.

They got away with it.

It was the Tánaiste who put the poster on the pole with the message "Single Party Government — No Thanks". In the wake of the Taoiseach's difficulties, the Tánaiste told the Irish people he would see to it that new ethics legislation would be introduced quickly in this House. He said that to save his own bacon because of his carry on and the fact that he desperately wanted to hold on to power. The good lady beside him would not have acted that way and neither would her predecessor. The Tánaiste did so because he has a craving to be in power and in the limelight. He does not understand that he above anyone else should see that commitments he has made to the public are honoured.

Where is the new ethics legislation that he promised publicly to the people? There are reports on this in today's newspapers. I notice the Tánaiste has to be advised by his Whip as to the status of his legislation. It is like the answer the Taoiseach gave yesterday to Deputy Rabbitte's query about promised legislation, that it is somewhere along the corridor.

It is sad.

The Tánaiste made a commitment in this regard. Where is the legislation? What are the issues in respect of which his party has prevented Fianna Fáil from being a single party Government?

I ask Deputy Kenny to give way to the Tánaiste.

The electorate will give its answer in seven or eight weeks' time to the range of promises that were broken by him and his cronies.

Deputy Kenny cannot get into government.

There will be a new Government shortly and it will not be led by the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste.

Hear, hear.

I am loath to interrupt that babble. It is because I am follically challenged that I can say the Deputy is having a bad hair day.

The Tánaiste had a few of those himself.

When he had hair.

In regard to the specific ethics provision, which I understood the Deputy would raise on the Order of Business, that has been approved by Cabinet and will be brought before the Houses of the Oireachtas.

When?

It will be brought forward as soon as may be and the House will have an opportunity to debate it. The Deputies should relax, it is coming.

The Tánaiste is a failure.

He is only a mudguard for Fianna Fáil.

The Tánaiste's arrogance does not make for good legislation.

The Cabinet approved the text of the Bill and Deputy Kenny knows it is coming. He has merely rattled out a series of assertions. There are questions he does not want asked — his only direct question to me was when this ethics legislation will be brought before the House. It is the next legislation that will come before the Seanad shortly and it will come to this House thereafter.

It is always tomorrow.

The Tánaiste is a total failure.

He will not be here in three weeks' time.

Deputy Rabbitte should be allowed to speak without interruption.

When we were kicked out in 1997, more than 9% of people were unemployed. That was better, however, than the 14.2% who were unemployed in 1992 when the Progressive Democrats Party was kicked out. Deputy Kenny and I may have chalked up 50 years between us but the Tánaiste would be well on the way to that number if his constituents had not given him a long holiday every time they saw his performance in this House. I might have been on the high chair at the Cabinet but there is a good chance the Tánaiste will get the high jump from the people once more, as has been his habitual record.

I wish to ask the Tánaiste about a file he received last year from the parents of children with special needs in Drogheda. The organisation in question, Special Needs Active Parents, represents 64 families in Louth and a smaller number in Meath. In this file, these parents set out that there are 139 children under six years of age and 350 between six and 18 years with spina bifida, cerebral palsy, autism and several other disabilities in their area.

This file, which was sent to the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, explains that these children cannot access occupational therapy and speech therapy service. There is one occupational therapist, who was appointed only a year ago, to serve these children. The need for these services is recognised by the HSE, which says there should be one occupational therapist per 15 children. The reality, however, is that there is only one full-time occupational therapist for these 490 children and provision for a half day a week for another occupational therapist who sets up the special equipment.

The file includes parents' harrowing letters detailing how their children are affected. One child, for example, who is named and whose parents are willing to be named, was born on 18 February 2003 and diagnosed with spina bifida and hydrocephalus. Since birth, he has received only four sessions of occupational therapy. His parents state:

Our children do not have time on their side and we, as totally worn out and frustrated parents, can only do so much.... A lot of us, myself included, have given up paid employment to be at home full time with our children.

Did the Tánaiste read the letters or any one of them and did he reply to them? Has he taken any action in response to that file? Can he explain why, given his view of us having more resources than we need, those parents are left in that limbo land without the services acknowledged by the HSE for their children with those particular disabilities?

As the Deputy knows, one of the functions of the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform is to take charge of the promotion in these Houses of the legislation which was necessary to deal with the disability area. The Deputy will be aware that last year the Minister of State with particular responsibility for disabilities, Deputy Fahey, and I put in place the sectoral plans to deal with all aspects of disability and the statutory basis for all of those plans to be implemented. Ireland has one of the most advanced laws on disability. The entire disability sector was brought into a very lengthy process of consultation on how we would tackle the various facets of disability in our society. We put through the disability legislation and the sectoral plans. These were published and became the responsibility of individual Ministers with their own sectoral plans in each area.

The correspondence to which the Deputy refers would, of course, have gone to the equality section of my Department and would have been considered there by the Minister of State, Deputy Fahey, and fed into the process which led to the disability legislation being enacted and the disability sectoral plans. This year a sum of €800 million, up 30% on previous funding, is being spent on special needs education. This year we are increasing very substantially the number of occupational therapists in training. As part of the overall expenditure in the health area, the Health Service Executive is getting major increased resources to deal with specific cases of the kind the Deputy mentioned, such as parents whose children are afflicted with the tragic condition of spina bifida. We were speaking earlier about Deputy Kenny's comparison with ten years ago and Deputy Rabbitte's comparison with the unemployment rate of ten years ago. If one considers what has been done in the lifetime of the two Governments, in which the current parties are partners, it is clear there has been a dramatic transformation.

Did the Tánaiste ask them?

If one looks to the amounts of money spent, €1 million extra was provided for disability in 1996 when the Opposition was sitting in that high chair. That was the extent of the munificence of that highly successful Government.

I know about the Minister.

The Opposition left the disabled children of Ireland high and dry.

Is it down to money?

Please allow the Tánaiste to reply without interruption.

One would be ashamed——

What about the kids?

The Tánaiste was forced by the courts——

A Cheann Comhairle, has your clock stopped?

Please allow the Tánaiste to respond without interruption. Deputy Allen is not the leader of the Labour Party and I ask him to allow the leader of the party to hear the answer to his question.

The Opposition would be ashamed collectively if it was reminded of how many special needs teachers there were when its party members sat at the Cabinet table.

What about the kids?

This year we have announced a five-year disability plan with an extra €900 million going into that area. Under the disability legislation, each child is entitled to have an individual education plan put in place.

The Tánaiste should tell them that.

They are not getting it

Each child is entitled to an independent appeal if that child's parents regard the plans put in place as inadequate.

That is an insult.

On a point of order——-

The Deputy is not the leader of her party.

The simple fact is that when Deputy Burton held office in my Department nothing was done by the Labour Party or Fine Gael for people with disabilities in this country.

The Tánaiste is a disgrace.

Has the Tánaiste read the files?

He never read them.

I thought the other man who is usually in that chair would say anything but, by God, he is only in the ha'penny place with this guy. The Tánaiste fed the file into the system. Did he read any of the letters?

Not at all.

Did he reply to any of the letters?

He is too important for that.

The Tánaiste said that ten years ago we did nothing. Those children are aged three and a half and four and a half years. They were not born when we were in government. If the basis of our exchanges are to be what happened ten years ago, from the man who said he would abolish stamp duty because we did not need the resources, what is the point in telling these parents we have the most advanced laws? Where are the services? It is not about law. There is one occupational therapist for 409 children. The parents in acute distress take the trouble to prepare and send a file to the Tánaiste in the belief that he took the equality part of his portfolio seriously and he does not even bother to acknowledge it——

The Deputy's time has concluded.

——let alone take any action on it. He has the sheer brass neck to get up here and point the finger at the party that caused the Department of Equality and Law Reform at Cabinet rank to come into existence.

Hear, hear.

The first thing the Tánaiste did when he came into office was to abolish it, take it under his own wing, and from that day to this he has not paid the slightest regard to it. What does he have to say to these parents who in desperation gave up their jobs to care for their children with disabilities and who are desperately seeking services which the HSE says are an acknowledged unmet need?

The Deputy's time has concluded.

He comes in here trading political insults as if we were back in the literary and historical society. When will the Tánaiste take his responsibilities as Minister seriously and give us less of the rhetoric and bombast and tell the mothers of these children when they can expect to get physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech therapists? That is the issue.

For stunts the Deputy has no equal. He comes in here——

That is shameful.

The Tánaiste to reply without interruption.

The Deputy should turn off the moral outrage, it does not suit him. He comes in here and asks me from memory whether I read individual letters a number of years after the event. I cannot give him a truthful answer on that because the volume of correspondence in my Department is such that if I did answer that question one way or the other, the file could show that I did see it or that I did not see it.

The Tánaiste said he did not.

I did not say that.

How did the Tánaiste know he had the file?

I did not say that. I am careful with what I say unlike Deputy Stagg.

There were services for ten years.

It is not rhetoric and bombast to point out that when the Deputies opposite were in office they did have a Department called the Department of Equality and Law Reform.

And a Minister who believed in equality unlike the Tánaiste.

As Deputy Michael D. Higgins is not the leader of his party I ask him to allow the leader to hear the answer to his question.

Unfortunately it is true that its record regarding the disabled children of Ireland was pitiful and shameful and no significant resources were put into that area at all.

The Tánaiste was there before that.

The Tánaiste signed the letter about the children. He then forgot about them. They mean nothing to him.

Please allow the Tánaiste to continue without interruption.

Between 1999 and 2002, I had the privilege of seeing the Minister, Deputy Cowen, and others at the Cabinet table saying the time had come to remedy the disgraceful legacy the Opposition had left in place——

Did he not say "If in doubt leave them out"?

——and that money must and would be found for children with disabilities.

The Tánaiste must be joking. He never stopped to tackle them.

This Government has ploughed record resources into dealing with disability.

He is the Minister for inequality.

If they are going to shout me down, that is fine, a Cheann Comhairle.

Allow the Tánaiste to continue without interruption, please.

No Government has engaged in a more dramatic transformation of the resources available for people with disabilities than this Government.

It did not come down to where it counts, on the ground.

When we came into office——

The Minister still will not answer the question.

If Deputies are going to shout at me, that is too bad.

Give up.

He is sulking.

I am not sulking.