Senator Paschal Mooney suggested there had been a lack of legislation in this House to date in 2013. This is our fifth sitting week since we resumed in January and I think we have dealt with at least two or three Bills in each of those weeks. Last week we dealt with four Bills. We do not have very much legislation this week because the alterations made to recent Dáil schedules to deal with the promissory notes issue and the Magdalen laundries report delayed the passage through that House of legislation that was due to be brought to this House. A number of Bills are due to be brought to the House. If they are not considered next week, they will be dealt with the following week.

Senator Paschal Mooney also spoke about the Mangan report which we will discuss next week. Something in the Fianna Fáil psyche seems to be causing the members of that party to forget the national recovery plan that it produced as a means of bringing the country back to economic prosperity. That plan proposed structural reform of the planning of certain family income supports, including child benefit. As part of the plan, Fianna Fáil proposed:

The development of a rebalanced and integrated child income support payment system. This would provide for a universal component to replace Child Benefit with one single payment rate per child. This [universal] payment will be supplemented with a further payment in the case of children of families in receipt of a social welfare payment or in low income employment. These supplements will replace qualified child payments and family income supplement as appropriate.

This is precisely the two-tier model proposed in the Mangan report which Deputy Willie O'Dea sought to rubbish yesterday. It is exactly the same. As in the cases of the property tax and water charges, Fianna Fáil in opposition is against proposals that it favoured when it was in government.

We lost power. We were rejected by the electorate.

The Leader to continue, without interruption.

We lost 58 seats in Dáil Éireann, for God's sake.

The comfort of the Opposition benches means never having to make hard choices. Fianna Fáil knows that now.

Some €640 million was taken out of the child benefit system after 2008. The hard decisions were taken. That is why we lost seats.