In his presidential address to the Fine Gael Ardfheis on Saturday, the Taoiseach said:
FRIENDS and colleagues, I am proud to address you this evening as president of Fine Gael - and as Taoiseach.
In tonight's address I want to talk to you about where I see Ireland going. I want to tell you about the aims and values of Fine Gael, and about how, together, we can strengthen the communities in which we live.
Twenty two months ago, in May, 1994, when we gathered at our last ardfheis in Limerick, we had just come through a difficult period. But we held our nerve. We went forward from there to win by election victories for Michael Ring in Mayo, and for Hugh Coveney in Cork. Those by election victories enabled us to enter Government.
In opposition and in Government, Fine Gael's objectives have been consistent.
At our last ardfheis in opposition, I described what I hoped for Ireland in five years time. I said: "I want to see an Ireland where social justice is not a watchword for compulsion or taxation, but is something that people live in their daily lives. I want to see an end to urban ghettos that divide rich and poor. I want to see an Ireland where the value of your house is not seen as more important than the welfare of your neighbour. Only then will we have an Ireland that is united in the truest meaning of the term".
These remain our objectives today, in Government. We want to build a genuine sense of community in Ireland. That's how we will express our commitment to social justice.
Communities do not become, strong because they are rich; they become rich because they are strong communities. At, a time when we are enjoying record economic growth, we have a moral duty to ensure that the fruits of that growth are distributed to those who need them most.
Fine Gael has always believed in speaking up for all the people who live in Ireland. Every person counts. We must provide for individual opportunity in a country where real communities matter.
Fine Gael does not make the case for special interest groups, nor do we propose simple solutions, or promote single item agendas. We do not sell conflicting messages about economic management, depending on who we are talking to, as our opponents do. Fine Gael does not engage in three card trick economics, promising spending cuts to one audience - and more services to another.
The smallest, and the most vital, social institution in any community is the family. It is a vital task of Fine Gael in Government to strengthen families. We want to do this by providing the chance of a job to all members of a family who wish to take work outside the home. That is why we want to reform our social system, so that it pays to make a job, and it pays to take a job.
As leader of Fine Gael in 1990, I said that my first priority was employment. It still is. And I am proud now to lead a Government where, at the end of 1995, there were 45,000 more people at work in Ireland than there were at work at the beginning of the same year.
We have had an average increase in employment of 100 jobs per day, every day, since Fine Gael entered Government. The increase in employment in 1995 alone, in one year, was more than the total increases in unemployment in the 30 years combined from 1960 to 1989. We want to keep that up. The last two years have seen employment taxes cut by a third on the 600,000 Irish workers whose take home pay is the lowest. That is "direct help for them and their families.
While the structure of families is changing, their fundamental function - the rearing of children - remains unchanged. We set up the first ever Dail Committee on the Family, chaired by Paul McGrath, and also an official Commission to complement it in its work. In Government, Fine Gael, in little over a year, has increased child benefit by a hall, thus helping over one million children and nearly half a million families.
Children's welfare must be our first concern. We are now confronting the painful reality that children were not always treated, well in Ireland. This is not an exercise in righteous hindsight. The priority is to do better for the children of today and tomorrow, and to help heal the wounds that many have silently carried within them for years.
We want all families to have a good level of disposable income. Mortgage rates are vital to the family budget. Mortgage rates are now at their lowest level for 30 years. Families on a £40,000 mortgage are now paying £130 less per month than they were paying when the present opposition parties were in government. That is also a direct help to families.
As I said, we have a great record in job creation. But few of the many new jobs are offered to the long term unemployed. Those unemployed for a year or more have great difficulty even getting an interview. That is why Fine Gael advocated the imaginative measures, which we have included in this year's Budget, to tackle long term unemployment - this most corrosive of all social problems for families.
We make no apology for the priority we have put on long term unemployment in the 1996 budget. This priority is consistent with Fine Gael's political philosophy. To those who may have forgotten, we are the party of the just society.
Long term unemployment affects the stability of families. Long term unemployment leads to crime. Long term unemployment leads to drug addiction. Eight out of 10 heroin abusers are unemployed, and seven out of 10 of them have left school without qualification. Heroin is now the fuel which drives much of the worst crime in urban areas. So, if we want to tackle crime and poverty, we must tackle long term unemployment and vice versa.
That is why, alongside our attack in the budget on long term unemployment, Nora Owen has brought forward tough measures to tackle crime and drugs. Fine Gael, as a party which passionately believes in the rule of law, pledges itself to work relentlessly each day in Government to make both city and country a safer place.
We want those who take risks to create jobs to be rewarded. We want entrepreneurs - and high achievers to make money. But we do not want a society in which they have to spend their money on security protection, afraid to fully enjoy what they have earned because of the risk of crime.
If we are to eradicate the causes of crime and alienation as well as tackling long term unemployment and drug addiction, we must build a strong sense of community. A strong sense of local community. People caring and looking out for each other.
Building on strong and responsible families we must build strong and responsible neighbourhoods. Our political system must also reinforce a sense of community, by devolving power and responsibility for Government services to local areas. This is a programme of work that will take many years to complete. It will meet resistance. It will cost money. But it will be worth it because it will humanise our system of government.
We have shown our commitment to local needs by pledging £1 billion over the next 10 years to upgrade our county roads - ending decades of neglect. We care about the quality of life all over this country.
LET me sum up. Our objectives are simple: keep up the growth in employment; keep interest rates low; tackle the causes of crime - while dealing with crime itself- especially violent crime; develop local communities by reforming our system of government.
Strengthening families, and developing neighbourhoods, are core Fine Gael aims in Government. In working for these aims I am supported by the elected members of Fine Gael, all of whom are helping to provide this country with a Government that reflects all that is best in our society.
I hope that we will soon welcome a new member to our ranks in the Dail - our candidate in the Dublin West by election, Councillor Tom Morrissey. He will join a parliamentary party chaired by Phil Hogan which supports a team that includes nine Ministers of State led by Government Whip, Jim Higgins.
As Taoiseach I am proud to lead a strong and united team in Government. Fine Gael contributes eight members to that Government team. In all I have done as Taoiseach and as leader of the party, I have been backed up by colleagues and friends of resolution and determination.
I NOW want to talk to you about the two communities that live on this island, particularly in Northern Ireland. Fine Gael's aim in Government is to help the two traditions in Ireland to build a community that is founded on reconciliation, and sealed by consent.
My first concern, at this time, is the security of everybody living in this state. That is why I have fought for, and obtained, a fixed date for all party talks - so that we can deal with all problems through politics, not violence.
I insisted from the very beginning of the peace process on maintaining the independence of decision making of our democratically elected Government. I was willing to accept the inevitable criticisms that have sometimes been levelled at me because of this. My priority is the independence of this State's democratic institutions. No secret organisation will ever write our agenda. That independence is the bedrock of all we have achieved here over 75 years.
Let me explain why I am so happy that we have been able to fix June 10th as the date for all party talks. There are genuine grievances felt by the republican community, which Sinn Fein, quite fairly and justly, articulates.
Yes, I do want to talk to Sinn Fein; yes, I do want to see Sinn Fein take their places at the negotiating table. But that must be a negotiating table from which threats have been banished. There can be no effective talks, no effective negotiations, unless everybody is willing to negotiate by the same rules.
There cannot be a situation where peaceful parties feel under threat from others who insist on their right to approve or support violence, if things at the negotiating table do not go their way.
My aim for these all party negotiations, that start on June 10th, is ambitious. It is to reach a genuinely balanced settlement, a settlement that institutionalises the nationalist identity of 600,000 people in Northern Ireland, without threat to the British identity of their neighbours.
We are aiming at something without precedent in Ireland - a political system to which both communities can give equal loyalty. Yes, in these negotiations, as in other walks of life, we must openly confront all past injustices - not to replenish the fund of grievance, but so that the wounds may be healed, and we may, together, move on to better times.
Opportunities were lost during the ceasefire.
Nothing would have been sacrificed by unionists if they were to have talked directly to Sinn Fein during those 18 months. Indeed unionists would have gained a moral ad vantage from it.
That is not the only opportunity which was lost. Throughout the ceasefire the IRA continued to train volunteers, continued to target people, continued to single out individuals for potential assassination, continued to tolerate punishment beatings and banishments, and continued to develop new weapons.
This activity was just a symptom of the real and underlying problem. The problem is a failure to understand that serious engagement in a peace process means that you change your strategy, as well as your tactics. This did not happen in the republican movement during the past 18 months.
Throughout the ceasefire, a great part of the republican movement continued to think in militaristic terms. They should have used the ceasefire to retrain all their volunteers for politics. They should, of their own accord, have turned their swords into ploughshares.
The republican movement did not do so. That failure to follow the logic of the peace process was fundamental to the breakdown in the ceasefire. Deep down, the psychology of conciliation did not replace the psychology of confrontation.
Any political movement that gives up violence must go through a painful process of change.
I ask the IRA to do more than just stop the violence. I ask the entire republican movement to stop thinking in terms of threats, and start thinking in terms of peaceful persuasion.
The republican movement must come to understand that violence, of its very nature, is partitionist, and always has been.
Twenty five years of violence has partitioned, both physically and psychologically, the townlands, the villages and the cities of the North more deeply than they were ever partitioned before.
It is no tribute to the memory of the republican dead to continue with a policy that simply cannot work. Their sacrifice was real. They faced the ultimate human reality. It is no homage to them now, to refuse to face the ultimate political reality.
Success cannot be guaranteed by politics. But failure is, guaranteed by violence.
I emphasise again the word, persuasion. Unionists and nationalists must be persuaded to agree. They must be persuaded to make compromises. They must make those compromises with one another.
Ulster's unionists have lived in Ireland for at least 12 generations. They cannot, and will not, be moved by violence. Any more than Northern nationalists can be forced to give up their birthright by violence. All that violence, or the threat of violence, does is make a political settlement more difficult.
The two communities must agree together. They need help and leadership from the two governments. The two governments must act as guarantors. But the two communities themselves must, in the final analysis, compromise with one another.
LET me now say something about our economy. I do not believe that Government regulations or grants solve economic problems. I believe that it is people making brave decisions, taking risks, and working hard, who make an economy work.
Not only business benefits from low interest rates; home mortgage and other rates of interest are now at the lowest level they have been for 30 years. Why? First, because our currency is strong and we are ready to enter the European Monetary Union. Second by keeping its own borrowing in check, the Government helps to keep interest rates low. That is our economic policy, and I believe it is a sound one.
The Government must constantly remind itself that it is not spending its own money. We are spending your money. The money you contribute in taxes. That is why we have cut the level of real increase in Government spending this year to only 2 1/2 per cent. This is the lowest increase in Government spending since 1990.
When the two opposition parties were in Government together, spending rose by nearly three times as much each year as it will this. This Government is careful with your money. Others, unfortunately, were not.
But we are not going to cut basic services. There are those who want us to cut tax even more, and pay for it by cutting social welfare for the old, the sick and the unemployed. That is not a policy I intend to follow. It would be unfair. And it would undermine the social consensus upon which our economic success is based.
Fine Gael, and this Government as a whole, believes that working in partnership with trade unions, with employers and with farming organisations is the best means of securing balanced economic development. Social partnership enables us all to pursue long term goals, rather than scramble for short term gains. The Government looks forward to negotiating a successor to the present Programme for Competitiveness and Work.
Fine Gael is the largest party in a Government that is working well. Having three parties working together requires real partnership and team building. A good team will always have complementary skills. I believe it is healthy that we have three different parties in this Government. It is healthy that they represent different interests, that they argue from different standpoints. That is a strength and not a weakness.
This is a Government which recognises that its strength lies in its diversity. Above all, this is a Government that works. Dick Spring and Proinsias De Rossa are outstanding colleagues. They have supported me in my work - I support them in theirs. We are getting on with the job.
The last two governments collapsed because the main opposition party does not understand how partnerships work. Fine Gael, as the largest of the three parties in this Government, does recognise that it has the first responsibility to promote unity and Cohesion, and to ensure that all have full ownership in the work of the Government.
This is how effective partnerships work. It is because Fine Gael understands the dynamics of Coalition Government that this is probably one of the most stable governments the country has ever had.
People should be wary of politicians who promise too much - who promise benefits without effort. Politicians cannot guarantee anyone a pain free or a risk free future. But we can help each family and each neighbourhood to plan its own future prudently.
I want the Ireland of the next century to be a place where people still know their neighbours, where family members still depend on one another, and where the cash economy does not determine and dominate all human relationships.
In our proper wish now to confront the hypocrisies, the injustices, and the stifling conformity of the old Ireland, let us also hold on to the good we have inherited. Let us hold on to the capacity for self sacrifice, the concern for immediate family and friends, and the pride in what makes us distinctly Irish.
