Labour will be engine for change
Issued : Friday 18 May, 2007
Statement by Eamon Gilmore TD
Leader of the Labour Party, Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs & Trade
We are now less than a week away from the election, entering the final weekend before polling day, the period when many undecided voters settle on their voting intentions.
Almost three weeks into one of the longest election campaigns of recent decades, I am more convinced than ever that we are heading for a change of government and that Labour is poised to pick up a significant number of additional seats.
There has at last some discussion on policy issues over the past few days, a trend we warmly welcome. We have always wanted this election to be about policy issues and in that regard we published not just the most comprehensive Labour Party manifesto ever, running to 120 pages but also over 20 policy documents.
Fianna Fail has made a series of futile efforts to raise doubts in the public mind about the capacity of the Alliance for Change to safely handle the economy and protect the economic progress that has been achieved over the past 15 years. They resorted to scare tactics and crude attempts to misrepresent our positions.
The public has not been impressed. Voters are confident in the ability of politicians like Pat Rabbitte, Ruairi Quinn, Brendan Howlin who served with distinction in government in the 1990s to protect and enhance our economic progress.
When Pat Rabbitte went to the Labour Party conference in Tralee in 2005 his objective was to ensure that at the general election the people would not just have an alternative government, but one that also offered policies that were different and that would, in particular, deliver better public services and a better quality of life.
And during the course of this campaign, clear difference have emerged between what the outgoing government is offering and what Labour will deliver in government.
- Labour will deliver 2,300 additional beds in public hospitals. Fianna Fail is committed to facilitating the building of super private clinics on public hospital grounds.
- Labour is committed to providing 5 half days of pre-school education for all our children. Fianna Fail has set its face squarely against any universal provision of pre-school education.
- Labour is committed to the abolition of the means test for carers. Fianna Fail has resisted all calls to do away with this unfair means test.
- Labour is committed to the introduction of Begin to Buy scheme to enable couples to begin to buy a home. Fianna Fail, as always, are on the side of the builders and developers.
- Labour is committed to reviewing the entire decentralization plan. Fianna Fail is committed to proceeding with the McCreevy plan regardless of the difficulties it will create for public servants or the damage it may do to areas of the public service.
And these are just some of the areas of where there are serious and substantial differences between the parties. So those who say that all parties are the same are not correct.
When I spoke here ten days ago I said that the principal issue emerging in the campaign was health. Having now spent almost three weeks canvassing round the clock, I am more convinced than ever that health will be the biggest single issue that will influence people when they go to vote on Thursday next.
People are now quite fearful of falling ill. They are worried about having to face the ordeal of an A&E unit with a sick child. They are concerned about the difficulty of finding a step down bed for an elderly parent. They are fearful about the prospect of contracting MRSA. Women are concerned that they too may fall victim of a botched breast cancer testing, as happened in the case of Rebecca O'Malley that was highlighted during the week
The concern about health is now developing into an unstoppable mood for change that will, I am confident, sweep Fianna Fail and the PDs out of office and return the Alliance for Change with a mandate to deliver real change.
Fixing the health service begins on Thursday with a change of government.
ENDS
