The following are edited extracts from the speech of Labour Party leader Mr Ruairí Quinn to his party conference on Saturday:
Even though he only came to Dublin from Newry I know my father felt like an outsider. Despite all the republican rhetoric, this state wasn't particularly welcoming to migrants from the North.
They say that immigrants often work hard and my father certainly was an example of it. My brothers, sister and I were definitely the beneficiaries. In an age not known for comfort, we were comfortable.
We benefited from an education that was denied to so many other Dubliners ... At home we were pushed hard to achieve. And it wasn't all about money either. Those were less cynical times. Public service and serving the state were stronger values than they are today. That I became a politician stems largely from my upbringing. Politics was in my blood.
I won't paint an idyllic picture of those times. Poverty was everywhere. I became an architect partly in response to the tenements I saw around me as a teenager and young adult.
As a people we gave respect without demanding accountability in return. We accepted too much with a nod and a wink. As a society we turned our backs on women and children in particular.
As a politician, I am pleased to have played a small part in changing that culture. Society today is more open and more questioning and is the better for it.
Sure we have problems. But they are the problems generated by a successful economy, not the insoluble problems of the poverty of old.
And if we overcome them we can transform this island into one of the leading small countries in Europe:
• A country with the best health service
• A country with the best childcare system.
• A country with values confident enough to express them on the world stage.
• A country where it is safe to walk the streets.
• A country with dreams.
But to get there will require collective effort, a sense of purpose and a goal. Above all it will require ambition.
There is a challenge ahead of us and politics is central to it.
Don't listen to the cynics who say politics isn't important anymore. It simply is.
The cost of bad government is paid hour-by-hour, day-by-day. Too often, it is paid in silent frustration.
• It is paid in the daily grind and stress of poor transport services.
• It is paid in the running to and from inadequate childcare.
• It is paid every day by carers, whose isolation deepens.
It is paid every day by people lying on portable trolleys in corridors waiting for hospital beds.
The job of government should be about unleashing human potential, not restricting it. For the last five years, this Government has held it back.
Labour has a different vision for this country. Its core is contained in our pledge card:
• A health service that treats people on the basis of need
• A properly funded education system in which teachers focus on teaching children not raising funds
• A more equal society that looks after its least well off as it rewards everybody else
• A society that recognises the importance of childcare and pre-school education for parents and children alike
• And a right to housing for all our people.
Already the nay-sayers are saying we're not realistic. How often have we heard this mantra before? Realism has its place but let it be the servant of idealism, not its master.
And it is not as if we couldn't do with some idealism. We have come through five years of a grubby Government whose only priority has been its own re-election. A Government headed by a man who would rather open pubs than drive this country forward.
The reality is that Fianna Fáil has become Ireland's conservative party. The national green of old has given way to a new Tory Blue. All the Tory hallmarks are there - Fianna Fáil are pro-corporate funding, pro-privatisation and increasingly Euro-sceptic.
Where has their "realism" got us? Ireland is a society that is sick waiting:
• Sick of waiting in hospitals
• Sick of waiting for homes
• Sick of waiting in traffic
• Sick of waiting for a better quality of life.
If you want to understand why this Government starved public services of funding in its first three years of office, the answer can be found back then.
They weren't interested in public services. They had no plans for them. Tax cutting was their sole agenda. No intellectual energy went into anything else.
How else can you explain a Government that waited five years to produce a National Health Strategy? Or a Government that put public transport improvements back five years.
Now, the Government is throwing money at problems it has not thought through. With an election looming, panic has taken over and the taxpayer is being ripped off.
Over the last 2½ years we have produced 17 considered and detailed policy documents. We have set out a radical platform for transforming Irish society.
Our work has culminated in our pledges, my pledges to the Irish people.
Six guarantees of what Labour will do in office. Not all we will do, but the least we will do.
I watched the Taoiseach address the nation just two weeks ago with a sense of disbelief. He should know better than to insult the intelligence of the Irish people. Fianna Fáil are back to the old lies of 1977, promising all things to all people.
A Bertie Bowl, a National Development Plan, the National Health Strategy, pension increases, more education spending - all with low taxes, more money into the pension fund and no borrowing.
The Irish people have been down this road before with Fianna Fáil. I thought the days of lavish spending commitments with no attempt to show how they will be paid for were over. If a Labour leader did what the Taoiseach did two weeks ago, the business media would have hit the roof.
These are the facts. Compare the records:
• The public finances moving into surplus in 1997 are back in deficit.
• Inflation that stood at just over 1 per cent in 1997 now stands at nearly 5%.
• The 50,000 new jobs a year of 1997 has been turned into 165 job losses a day over the last three months.
• Increases in public spending are running at 21 per cent a year as against the promised 4 per cent.
• The National Development Plan, without which we will have no economic future, is way behind schedule.
This party will take no lectures from Bertie Ahern about sound economic management.
And on the key issue that concerns the electorate, the state of our health services, Minister McCreevy has made it clear too that he has no intention of funding the new hospitals and extra beds called for in his own Government's National Health strategy.
That strategy is a con job on the Irish people. The Government doesn't believe in it and won't fund it. Neither will Fine Gael. Labour will.
Labour has already produced the most radical reform proposals to ensure value for money in our health system. We do need to take on vested interests like the consultants but without investment in new facilities, particularly for the elderly, the old problems will remain. The system simply doesn't have enough capacity.
We need €7.5bn to build new hospitals and provide modern nursing homes. These are the Government's figures, not mine.
At the moment we are setting aside over €1bn a year into a fund to pay for our pension requirements in 2026.
I am proposing that for a five-year period only we reduce that contribution by 75 per cent to pay for the health needs of our pensioners today. Let's put in place a system of care that benefits both present and future pensioners - 75 per cent over five years and five years only will generate over €5bn for capital investment. And we'll still have €12bn set aside for the rainy day.
So at the next election, the Irish people will have a clear choice between a Labour Party that will tackle the problems in our health service and the conservative parties that will not. That's honesty and delivery.
Friends, nothing gives politics a worse name than a Taoiseach who pretends that no hard choices have to be made by our citizens.
You cannot have public services the envy of Europe on American spending levels. You cannot save 1½ percent of your gross national product and still have enough money to invest in services and infrastructure.
So let me lay down a challenge to Bertie Ahern. Let's talk prudent economic management not poppycock. Let me lay down Labour's golden economic rules that will drive our approach to management of our economy - a strategy based on investing in our future. Honesty and delivery, says our pledge card, so let's start with being honest with the Irish people about the economic choices that have to be made.
1. Labour will change the rules governing the use of our pension fund reserve to enable our money to be invested in our health system over a five-year period - to build hospitals in Ireland not invest in the arms industry abroad.
2. Labour is prepared to borrow to fund capital investment projects in the National Development Plan. The economic prosperity of the future will depend on the infrastructure we put in place now. It is not a case of can we afford to invest, we can't afford not to. In the 1980s we borrowed money to get by. Now we can borrow to invest in our future knowing that membership of the single currency has eliminated exchange rate risks.
3. Labour will not increase income taxes for ordinary families and we will take minimum wage earnings out of the tax net.
But we will channel additional resources into funding our pledges - building a fair and efficient health system, supporting education and childcare, tackling inequality, supporting carers and building homes for people to live in.
There will be no more McCreevy tax cuts for the rich and privileged.
The Taoiseach has been talking a lot about the eighties of late. He certainly talks more about the past than he does about the future.
Who else would have split the country down the middle on an abortion referendum we didn't need and didn't want? Who else would have sought to criminalise half of our population had they found themselves in the tragic position of a Miss X? And the PDs instead of standing by the Republic, simply stood idly by.
The Taoiseach may have run scared from discussing abortion at his ardfheis, but I will not. As a people, we cannot hide from it. Abortion remains a long-term issue to be dealt with in this country. How as a society do we want to deal with cases like that of Deirdre de Barra? To be sure another constitutional referendum would be required and that will take some time. This party is beginning a process to examine on what other grounds we believe abortion might be available in this country - including rape, incest and a serious risk to the health of the mother. It is a debate that has already resonated around the country.
But there is an immediate priority. Twice now the Irish people have voted against the rolling back of the Supreme Court decision in the X case.
There is now a clear moral imperative on legislators to legislate. I recognise that for some people there are issues of conscience involved here. But I believe that we can meet our collective responsibility as members of the Oireachtas to act, while respecting the strongly held views of individual TDs and Senators.
For Labour, the Irish people have made legislating for X a key requirement for any future Government.
There are other social issues to be dealt with too.
I would like to see some form of legal recognition to couples that do not wish to get married so that they can put their business and personal affairs in order.
I want to see legal recognition of the rights of gay couples so that their unions are recognised as legitimate in our society.
I talked earlier about not resting on our laurels. I said that if we did not move forwards we would move backwards. Our membership of the European Union is one such example. We cannot stand still while others move on.
I am passionate about our membership of the European Union. I believe in collective action, nationally and internationally.
As a socialist I believe that it is our duty to tame the power of global capitalism, just as European socialists of the last century tamed the rampant capitalism of the Victorian era. But to be successful such action will require cooperation across the boundaries of nation states. As capitalism goes global, so should democracy.
That is how I see the European Union.
In Ireland and in Northern Ireland in particular, we have come a long way in a short period of time. But if anything our journey has merely exposed the deep-rooted sectarian nature of our society. What disturbs me most is the ease with which sectarian hatreds are passed from one generation to the next. A lot of the kids rioting in North Belfast have no real memory of the Troubles never mind internment.
What we heard from David Trimble recently is the kind of stuff we expect from Sinn Féin, without the subtlety and PR spin. Those who have invested time in the Northern peace process, the Bill Clinton's and Dick Spring's of this world, deserve a better return than seeing the First Minister devalue his office for party political gain.
This isn't a perfect society down here. Yes, we are struggling to cope with new cultures and new faces. Immigration is one of the issues we have to deal with.
But deal with it we will.
This party has been to the fore in arguing not just for respect for non-nationals living here but for a system of controlled immigration that meets our needs and is better for those who come here.
And leaving David Trimble's arrogance aside, we still have things to learn from Northern Ireland. Policing is an example. The Patten report is not just about policing in a divided society - it is also about best practice and democratic accountability.
Let me be clear, Labour will not serve in any Government that doesn't have reform of the gardaí high on its political agenda.
So as the election approaches Fianna Fáil talk about more gardaí even though we have as many gardaí per head of population as the European average.
If there is auction politics in this country, it is largely because there is little philosophical or ideological difference between our two largest parties. As Irish society has changed, electoral politics still continues to reflect the old certainties of the civil war. I think its time for both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to reflect whether they are doing politics any real service.
It remains this party's task to break the stranglehold that conservative parties have on our political system.
When we met in September I told you that I would not mortgage this party to either Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. I repeat that pledge this evening.
We will fight this election on our own independent platform. Whether we enter government or not will depend firstly on the mandate given to us by the people and the readiness of other parties to embrace our radical policy platform.
Let a vote for Labour be a statement of intent. An indication that we will move forward and create a better society. That we will no longer accept second best. That honest politics can be rewarded.
That instead of being afraid and intimidated by the Germanys and Frances of this world, that we will set out to surpass them, not just in GDP or GNP, but in the quality of life of our citizens.
The following are edited extracts from the speech of Labour Party leader Mr Ruairí Quinn to his party conference on Saturday:
Even though he only came to Dublin from Newry I know my father felt like an outsider. Despite all the republican rhetoric, this state wasn't particularly welcoming to migrants from the North.
They say that immigrants often work hard and my father certainly was an example of it. My brothers, sister and I were definitely the beneficiaries. In an age not known for comfort, we were comfortable.
We benefited from an education that was denied to so many other Dubliners ... At home we were pushed hard to achieve. And it wasn't all about money either. Those were less cynical times. Public service and serving the state were stronger values than they are today. That I became a politician stems largely from my upbringing. Politics was in my blood.
I won't paint an idyllic picture of those times. Poverty was everywhere. I became an architect partly in response to the tenements I saw around me as a teenager and young adult.
As a people we gave respect without demanding accountability in return. We accepted too much with a nod and a wink. As a society we turned our backs on women and children in particular.
As a politician, I am pleased to have played a small part in changing that culture. Society today is more open and more questioning and is the better for it.
Sure we have problems. But they are the problems generated by a successful economy, not the insoluble problems of the poverty of old.
And if we overcome them we can transform this island into one of the leading small countries in Europe:
A country with the best health service
A country with the best childcare system.
A country with values confident enough to express them on the world stage.
A country where it is safe to walk the streets.
A country with dreams.
But to get there will require collective effort, a sense of purpose and a goal. Above all it will require ambition.
There is a challenge ahead of us and politics is central to it.
Don't listen to the cynics who say politics isn't important anymore. It simply is.
The cost of bad government is paid hour-by-hour, day-by-day. Too often, it is paid in silent frustration.
It is paid in the daily grind and stress of poor transport services.
It is paid in the running to and from inadequate childcare.
It is paid every day by carers, whose isolation deepens.
It is paid every day by people lying on portable trolleys in corridors waiting for hospital beds.
The job of government should be about unleashing human potential, not restricting it. For the last five years, this Government has held it back.
Labour has a different vision for this country. Its core is contained in our pledge card:
A health service that treats people on the basis of need
A properly funded education system in which teachers focus on teaching children not raising funds
A more equal society that looks after its least well off as it rewards everybody else
A society that recognises the importance of childcare and pre-school education for parents and children alike
And a right to housing for all our people.
Already the nay-sayers are saying we're not realistic. How often have we heard this mantra before? Realism has its place but let it be the servant of idealism, not its master.
And it is not as if we couldn't do with some idealism. We have come through five years of a grubby Government whose only priority has been its own re-election. A Government headed by a man who would rather open pubs than drive this country forward.
The reality is that Fianna Fáil has become Ireland's conservative party. The national green of old has given way to a new Tory Blue. All the Tory hallmarks are there - Fianna Fáil are pro-corporate funding, pro-privatisation and increasingly Euro-sceptic.
Where has their "realism" got us? Ireland is a society that is sick waiting:
Sick of waiting in hospitals
Sick of waiting for homes
Sick of waiting in traffic
Sick of waiting for a better quality of life.
If you want to understand why this Government starved public services of funding in its first three years of office, the answer can be found back then.
They weren't interested in public services. They had no plans for them. Tax cutting was their sole agenda. No intellectual energy went into anything else.
How else can you explain a Government that waited five years to produce a National Health Strategy? Or a Government that put public transport improvements back five years.
Now, the Government is throwing money at problems it has not thought through. With an election looming, panic has taken over and the taxpayer is being ripped off.
Over the last 2½ years we have produced 17 considered and detailed policy documents. We have set out a radical platform for transforming Irish society.
Our work has culminated in our pledges, my pledges to the Irish people.
Six guarantees of what Labour will do in office. Not all we will do, but the least we will do.
I watched the Taoiseach address the nation just two weeks ago with a sense of disbelief. He should know better than to insult the intelligence of the Irish people. Fianna Fáil are back to the old lies of 1977, promising all things to all people.
A Bertie Bowl, a National Development Plan, the National Health Strategy, pension increases, more education spending - all with low taxes, more money into the pension fund and no borrowing.
The Irish people have been down this road before with Fianna Fáil. I thought the days of lavish spending commitments with no attempt to show how they will be paid for were over. If a Labour leader did what the Taoiseach did two weeks ago, the business media would have hit the roof.
These are the facts. Compare the records:
The public finances moving into surplus in 1997 are back in deficit.
Inflation that stood at just over 1 per cent in 1997 now stands at nearly 5%.
The 50,000 new jobs a year of 1997 has been turned into 165 job losses a day over the last three months.
Increases in public spending are running at 21 per cent a year as against the promised 4 per cent.
The National Development Plan, without which we will have no economic future, is way behind schedule.
This party will take no lectures from Bertie Ahern about sound economic management.
And on the key issue that concerns the electorate, the state of our health services, Minister McCreevy has made it clear too that he has no intention of funding the new hospitals and extra beds called for in his own Government's National Health strategy.
That strategy is a con job on the Irish people. The Government doesn't believe in it and won't fund it. Neither will Fine Gael. Labour will.
Labour has already produced the most radical reform proposals to ensure value for money in our health system. We do need to take on vested interests like the consultants but without investment in new facilities, particularly for the elderly, the old problems will remain. The system simply doesn't have enough capacity.
We need €7.5bn to build new hospitals and provide modern nursing homes. These are the Government's figures, not mine.
At the moment we are setting aside over €1bn a year into a fund to pay for our pension requirements in 2026.
I am proposing that for a five-year period only we reduce that contribution by 75 per cent to pay for the health needs of our pensioners today. Let's put in place a system of care that benefits both present and future pensioners - 75 per cent over five years and five years only will generate over €5bn for capital investment. And we'll still have €12bn set aside for the rainy day.
So at the next election, the Irish people will have a clear choice between a Labour Party that will tackle the problems in our health service and the conservative parties that will not. That's honesty and delivery.
Friends, nothing gives politics a worse name than a Taoiseach who pretends that no hard choices have to be made by our citizens.
You cannot have public services the envy of Europe on American spending levels. You cannot save 1½ percent of your gross national product and still have enough money to invest in services and infrastructure.
So let me lay down a challenge to Bertie Ahern. Let's talk prudent economic management not poppycock. Let me lay down Labour's golden economic rules that will drive our approach to management of our economy - a strategy based on investing in our future. Honesty and delivery, says our pledge card, so let's start with being honest with the Irish people about the economic choices that have to be made.
1. Labour will change the rules governing the use of our pension fund reserve to enable our money to be invested in our health system over a five-year period - to build hospitals in Ireland not invest in the arms industry abroad.
2. Labour is prepared to borrow to fund capital investment projects in the National Development Plan. The economic prosperity of the future will depend on the infrastructure we put in place now. It is not a case of can we afford to invest, we can't afford not to. In the 1980s we borrowed money to get by. Now we can borrow to invest in our future knowing that membership of the single currency has eliminated exchange rate risks.
3. Labour will not increase income taxes for ordinary families and we will take minimum wage earnings out of the tax net.
But we will channel additional resources into funding our pledges - building a fair and efficient health system, supporting education and childcare, tackling inequality, supporting carers and building homes for people to live in.
There will be no more McCreevy tax cuts for the rich and privileged.
The Taoiseach has been talking a lot about the eighties of late. He certainly talks more about the past than he does about the future.
Who else would have split the country down the middle on an abortion referendum we didn't need and didn't want? Who else would have sought to criminalise half of our population had they found themselves in the tragic position of a Miss X? And the PDs instead of standing by the Republic, simply stood idly by.
The Taoiseach may have run scared from discussing abortion at his ardfheis, but I will not. As a people, we cannot hide from it. Abortion remains a long-term issue to be dealt with in this country. How as a society do we want to deal with cases like that of Deirdre de Barra? To be sure another constitutional referendum would be required and that will take some time. This party is beginning a process to examine on what other grounds we believe abortion might be available in this country - including rape, incest and a serious risk to the health of the mother. It is a debate that has already resonated around the country.
But there is an immediate priority. Twice now the Irish people have voted against the rolling back of the Supreme Court decision in the X case.
There is now a clear moral imperative on legislators to legislate. I recognise that for some people there are issues of conscience involved here. But I believe that we can meet our collective responsibility as members of the Oireachtas to act, while respecting the strongly held views of individual TDs and Senators.
For Labour, the Irish people have made legislating for X a key requirement for any future Government.
There are other social issues to be dealt with too.
I would like to see some form of legal recognition to couples that do not wish to get married so that they can put their business and personal affairs in order.
I want to see legal recognition of the rights of gay couples so that their unions are recognised as legitimate in our society.
I talked earlier about not resting on our laurels. I said that if we did not move forwards we would move backwards. Our membership of the European Union is one such example. We cannot stand still while others move on.
I am passionate about our membership of the European Union. I believe in collective action, nationally and internationally.
As a socialist I believe that it is our duty to tame the power of global capitalism, just as European socialists of the last century tamed the rampant capitalism of the Victorian era. But to be successful such action will require cooperation across the boundaries of nation states. As capitalism goes global, so should democracy.
That is how I see the European Union.
In Ireland and in Northern Ireland in particular, we have come a long way in a short period of time. But if anything our journey has merely exposed the deep-rooted sectarian nature of our society. What disturbs me most is the ease with which sectarian hatreds are passed from one generation to the next. A lot of the kids rioting in North Belfast have no real memory of the Troubles never mind internment.
What we heard from David Trimble recently is the kind of stuff we expect from Sinn Féin, without the subtlety and PR spin. Those who have invested time in the Northern peace process, the Bill Clinton's and Dick Spring's of this world, deserve a better return than seeing the First Minister devalue his office for party political gain.
This isn't a perfect society down here. Yes, we are struggling to cope with new cultures and new faces. Immigration is one of the issues we have to deal with.
But deal with it we will.
This party has been to the fore in arguing not just for respect for non-nationals living here but for a system of controlled immigration that meets our needs and is better for those who come here.
And leaving David Trimble's arrogance aside, we still have things to learn from Northern Ireland. Policing is an example. The Patten report is not just about policing in a divided society - it is also about best practice and democratic accountability.
Let me be clear, Labour will not serve in any Government that doesn't have reform of the gardaí high on its political agenda.
So as the election approaches Fianna Fáil talk about more gardaí even though we have as many gardaí per head of population as the European average.
If there is auction politics in this country, it is largely because there is little philosophical or ideological difference between our two largest parties. As Irish society has changed, electoral politics still continues to reflect the old certainties of the civil war. I think its time for both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to reflect whether they are doing politics any real service.
It remains this party's task to break the stranglehold that conservative parties have on our political system.
When we met in September I told you that I would not mortgage this party to either Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. I repeat that pledge this evening.
We will fight this election on our own independent platform. Whether we enter government or not will depend firstly on the mandate given to us by the people and the readiness of other parties to embrace our radical policy platform.
Let a vote for Labour be a statement of intent. An indication that we will move forward and create a better society. That we will no longer accept second best. That honest politics can be rewarded.
That instead of being afraid and intimidated by the Germanys and Frances of this world, that we will set out to surpass them, not just in GDP or GNP, but in the quality of life of our citizens.