I wish to continue in the same vein because the people are bewildered and are becoming more so by the hour. After all of the Government's bluster, reports and examinations, eight times fewer people will be exempt from the property tax this year. I can only speak for south Tipperary, where none of the unfinished estates has been completed. We did not get enough money from the Government even to put up hoardings around them to make them safe. This is a total farce.

People are reading this morning that if they are struggling with their mortgages, they will have to give up their health cover and their second car in order to do a deal with their bank. People are hearing that the lenders are going to get tough.

The Minister for Finance chaired an EU meeting last week concerning the situation in Cyprus and we saw how uncaring the response was. The Cypriots are standing up-----

Which topic is Deputy McGrath discussing now?

I am discussing the topic of the Government's recklessness and uncaring attitude and I am referring to the Labour Party in particular.

Deputy McGrath voted for a fair amount of recklessness in his time.

The year 1913 was the year of the Lock-out and 2013 will be the year of the great kick out. That is what the Government is doing - putting people out of their homes - and it should be ashamed. I read an article in a newspaper today which detailed how a couple were locked into their home in Dublin, near the Minister's house. A bunch of heavies boarded up the house with galvanised steel while they were inside with a small child. What next, Minister? Is there no new low to which the Labour Party will sink? The party has now become not the mud guard but the mud flap and the mud is sticking. The situation is appalling. The Minister can wax lyrical-----

This is Leaders' Questions. When is the Deputy going to ask a question?

Deputy McGrath, do you have a question?

When is the Minister going to stand up for the people he promised to defend? There is no point in blaming everybody else, including developers-----

Fianna Fáil and Deputy McGrath himself can take some blame.

There are people in negative equity now. There are people who need a second car. I need a second car, as do many in my constituency-----

Deputy McGrath, please put a question to the Minister.

When is the Minister going to look after the ordinary people and stop putting them into penury? Will he allow them to have their second car to bring their children to school or does he want their children to remain uneducated?

I feel like the people of south Tipperary after that because I, too, am bewildered. I am very hurt that Deputy McGrath should make such charges against me and the Government. The fact of the matter is we are trying to protect ordinary people.

The Minister has a funny way of showing it.

We are trying to put this country back on the road to economic recovery.

The Government is doing a great job so far.

There cannot be any social services or nurses, teachers and fire service personnel in their posts unless we get the economy right. I do not think it is fully understood how grave the situation was when this Government took over. We were on the edge of the abyss. That is how serious it was at the time. Deputy McGrath referred to Cyprus and what is playing out there at the moment. I could not believe my eyes when I saw the leader of Fianna Fáil on television last night, standing on the plinth and talking about what the Euro group ought to have done in the case of Cyprus, in the context of the proposal with regard to private bank accounts. He seems to have forgotten that his Government gave away the National Pensions Reserve Fund when the troika came in here. Fianna Fáil gave away the National Pensions Reserve Fund. Deputy Martin's party gave away the Irish people's future pensions-----

This Government has raided private pension funds.

-----as a condition of the bailout. There was no statutory measure accompanying that action. There is an awful lot of hypocrisy associated with this.

Deputy Rabbitte wrote the book.

There is always an element of theatre about Parliament and I understand the posturing. However, at the end of the day, we have to get the economy right. We are seeking to spread the tax burden as equitably as we can.

It is more than the tax burden the Government is spreading.

Some colleagues representing Dublin constituencies would say that people from south Tipperary and other provincial constituencies get a better deal under the valuation system than Dubliners. However, there had to be a valuation methodology settled on and the one chosen is based on market value. It is right that the efficacy of the collection system should not be in question and that everybody who is able to make a contribution does so. There is a system of voluntary deferral for those who cannot make a contribution as well as a system of exemptions. Those Deputies who followed the progress of the Bill through the House will know the details of that.

I am merely trying to explain the situation. We all accept we must try to get out of the abyss. That is what we were told we were doing on the night we voted for the bank guarantee, but how much worse would the abyss have been? That is why I mentioned Cyprus and the uncaring attitude of this Government, which holds the Presidency of Europe at the moment. The Government does not care about what is happening to the Cypriots, whose private savings are to be robbed. Deputy Rabbitte referred to Fianna Fáil robbing the National Pensions Reserve Fund but his Government imposed a levy of 0.6% on the private pensions of ordinary people. Bankers such as Mr. Richie Boucher are getting away with murder. This Government promised to face up to them but has not done so. It seems that the big guys are escaping and the ordinary people are suffering. The Minister's party was founded in my home town of Clonmel and was supposed to represent ordinary people. It did so, ably, for many decades but now it has abandoned them and left them behind. I have not seen many Labour Party members canvassing in County Meath. They are afraid to meet the people but they will have to meet them. Ordinary people cannot take any more. They cannot afford health insurance, never mind being told to get rid of it. They cannot afford to get sick. The charges for buses have trebled and-----

Does Deputy McGrath have a supplementary question?

When is the Minister going to act on the mandate that he got from the people of this country? When is he going to fulfil the promises he made to look after the ordinary people, to burn the bondholders and to cut the obscene wages of former politicians and bankers, as well as serving bankers, as we found out this week? When is he going to live up to his reputation for being a hard man? I remember seeing the Minister on a television programme with the former Deputy Pat Carey, who is a gentleman. He had all of the answers that night but has had none since. He is an abject failure.

The fundamental answer I had that night was that what then Deputy Pat Carey and his colleagues had done would put the subsequent Government into a straitjacket in terms of its freedom to make economic decisions for this country, and so it has turned out to be.

Can we see the transcript of that programme?

The fact of the matter is that from the time of the bank guarantee in 2008 to the general election in 2011, 250,000 of our people were made unemployed. A quarter of a million of our people lost their jobs and the first priority of this Government is to put those people back to work. This is the first priority.

There is no sign of that happening.

In order to do that, we have to get the economy back into balance.

Two years later and we are no further on.

That is the first challenge and that is what we are working on. There is no comparison between giving away the proceeds of the National Pensions Reserve Fund and levying 0.6% on pension funds as a contribution to the jobs initiative introduced by the Minister for Finance in the summer of 2011.

There is every comparison because it involves robbing ordinary people.

That initiative has produced results in the tourism and hospitality sector and elsewhere and it must be remembered that the same pension funds had been the recipient of enormously generous tax reliefs. There is simply no comparison.

We are trying to do exactly what the Deputy claims to aspire to, which is to look after the interests of the average citizen of this country-----

It is a funny way of doing it.

-----to give sons and daughters an opportunity to work in their homeland again.

Hear, hear.