Throughout history every ruler, where power has gone to his head, believes that nobody else can rule or govern. That is what we are now getting——

——from the Taoiseach and from Fianna Fáil.

Deputy Dooley was not that smart on Vincent Browne's television programme last night.

Let me tell the Taoiseach where he is wrong. The Opposition has supported the Government. We supported it on Europe. We supported it on the necessity to make the fiscal adjustment of €4 billion.

It did not.

Government Deputies are very good at the political debate, but let us stick with the facts. We supported it on the fiscal adjustment, on the necessity to reform public services and in respect of this country's international reputation in every meeting and discussion we have had — I am sure the same is true of Deputy Kenny — with the European Central Bank, the OECD and the European Commission, we have talked up our economy.

The Labour Party opposed everything.

We have made it clear that in circumstances where there were a change of Government, we would put the national interest first. The Taoiseach has been blessed with a responsible Opposition and yet——

——where we have opposed the Government we have been absolutely right. When this party opposed the blanket guarantee for the banks we were right.

The Labour Party was never right.

If that guarantee had not applied to Anglo Irish Bank, as it should not have, we would not now be stuck with the enormous bill of thousands of millions of euro of taxpayers' money——

The Deputy should tell us where we would be.

——that is going to have to go into that.

Deputies, please.

When we told the Government almost a year ago that the most prudent way of dealing with the banking crisis was the temporary nationalisation of the banks, the Taoiseach rubbished it. The Government has ended up with the situation where it will have nationalisation anyway by the back door in a dragged out way that is most expensive for the taxpayer. The Taoiseach's problem is that he has not been listening to the proposals coming from the Opposition parties and has not been acting accordingly. The Taoiseach has been taking decisions that are motivated by his desire to cover the tracks for his role and his party's role in the mismanagement of the economy in the past 12 years in creating the property bubble and the hand-in-glove approach it had down the years with bankers and developers.

Hear, hear.

I reject all that again.

Why would he not?

One of the problems of being in opposition too long is that Opposition parties believe that they alone possess the right to define what is the national interest. I know what is the national interest in discharging my responsibilities.

Self-service.

The Taoiseach is another victim.

I reject all the assertions the Deputy has been making about my position and my disposition in dealing with the issues that faced the country since I took office.

The Taoiseach created them.

My role, just as much as the Deputy's role would be if he had the honour, is to seek to defend the national interest of the country. The Deputy will not define it for me as if he had a higher motive than I have.

Is the Taoiseach claiming he did not cause the problem?

That motive has meant that the policies we have brought forward have sought to stabilise the crisis situation we were facing, have obtained international support for so doing and are determined to continue with a consistent approach that will bring recovery. There is considerable revisionism going on——

No there is not.

——as to what his party's position was during the good times when deficits would have been far higher coming into this situation. Both in terms of its policy framework and what it proposed coming into elections, let the record show where the economy would have been——

We know about the Taoiseach's position.

Deputy Durkan, please.

——had we followed its proposals, when its Members were saying to me when I was Minister for Finance that I was like Scrooge and was not spending enough money on health and education.

Now we have the revisionists seeking to suggest they were the responsible ones if only they had been around. The fact is that during those times we created 700,000 jobs. During those times we had growth in the economy.

The Government has lost half of them now.

We now need to ensure we effect recovery and rework the economy again. That is what we intend to do. I will not accept any suggestion from the Deputy, however populist it might appear.

Arrogance.

The Taoiseach just does not get it.

The idea that the financial viability of the country would have been best served by not proceeding with the bank guarantee on 29 and 30 September 2008 is so far off the mark that it is unbelievable. It is true that everyone in the Central Bank of Ireland and all advice to the Government at that time related to the systemic nature of those institutions.

Is that true?

It is not true.

That is the situation. There is no suggestion from the Deputy or anybody else that would suggest that we could get easier access to funds by not having that bank guarantee in place. In fact the bank guarantee has provided us with the means by which banks have been able to continue to operate and has reduced the cost of access to funding. In addition, the banks are paying for the guarantee. Despite all Deputy Gilmore's efforts to suggest that the Labour Party has an alternative credible model, it does not because the basic facts he is proposing would have meant meltdown within the Irish financial system, and that is indisputable.

No, that is not correct.

That concludes Leaders' Questions. We now move on to questions to An Taoiseach.