Leader's speech (edited): "The Special Olympics showed that we are a caring community. It showed the spirit of volunteerism that exists.
I would like to thank everyone involved because they showed the world in a special way that a small country like Ireland can manage so successfully, and with no little tenacity, the biggest sporting occasion held in the world last year.
I want those who suffer from disabilities in Ireland and their families to know that its legacy has not been lost on the Government and that will be clear when the Disability Bill is published very soon.
We had the honour earlier of the presence of Prof Menis, the head of the Madrid Metro. He represents in a very special way not just the people of Madrid, but the people of the rail and metro systems of Madrid who were so viciously attacked by terrorists just two weeks ago.
No words of mine could express the horror that was inflicted on those unfortunate innocent people, but we in Ireland know only too well the capacity of terrorist organisations to inflict horrendous pain and suffering on ordinary, decent working people and that is why we have to move away from words and into action.
This weekend the European Union made a commitment to solidarity with each other. We have agreed that we are going to stand shoulder to shoulder to secure our democracies and to defeat terrorism.
The message from Madrid is clear. We have got to be strong in making sure that we work together in every possible way. People might ask what a small country like Ireland can do against terrorism. I think it is very clear.
It is not about military intervention, it is not about swapping intelligence or new Garda powers. It is about none of those things. The biggest contribution that we in Ireland can make to the defeat of terrorism is to make sure that the paramilitaries are disbanded on this island. Private armies are incompatible with democracy.
Nowhere in Europe should we accommodate terrorism with democracies and we have got to ensure that we don't continue to do it in Ireland either. There is only one party in Dáil Éireann that has a private army and that is Sinn Féin. And it is time for Gerry Adams and his colleagues in Sinn Féin to disband that private army.
The peace process will not be complete until that is done. And the peace process in Ireland, which is delivering enormous progress for all of the people on this island, belongs to no single party, just as the flag behind me belongs to no single party either.
The Good Friday agreement has radically changed our relationship with Northern Ireland and our relationship with Britain. The Good Friday agreement will be Bertie Ahern's enduring political legacy, in my view. We salute him for that. And we salute him too for his skilful negotiations and stewardship of Ireland's presidency of the European Union.
This is the sixth time that we have had the honour of managing the affairs of the EU. It is our most important presidency. We are determined to ensure that it is our best. We have the presidency at a time of enormous change.
On the 1st of May, 10 new countries will join. Many of those countries are working to overcome the challenges of dismantling the leaden legacy of Communist times.
We wholeheartedly welcome them into our Union. We want to work with them and we want them particularly to know that in Ireland they will always be welcome and that is why from the first of May we are opening up our labour markets to their citizens.
It will work for them and it will work for us. We can provide enormous opportunities for them to grow the prosperity of their families as they earn good money here contributing to Ireland's economy and, perhaps, sending the money back home. It is a fact that the EU is undergoing major change because of enlargement.
Ireland may well succeed in negotiating the inter-governmental conference. That would be a tremendous achievement for us. But Europe has to work more efficiently and more effectively and it has to work better. That is why we need new structures and new governance.
But Europe works best with diversity and unity. Europe works best when we are clear what is done best at member-state level and when we are clear what has to be done at European Union level. We have to be strong and clear about the division of responsibilities. And it is not Europe, or a nation state. It is both.
You know it is 10 years since a Welshman working in London coined the phrase "Celtic Tiger". Nobody believed then that we had the potential to succeed the way that we have.
Some of us in this party did however. Did anybody really believe that over the last 10 years we would have increased employment by 600,000?
Did anybody believe that nine of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies in the world would have a major facility in Ireland? The world's largest bio-pharmaceutical facility is being built not in Cambridge, not in California, but in Clondalkin.
The population in every county in Ireland has increased over the last 10 years.
One in every six houses in this country was built in the last six years. Has anybody realised that?
All over the world people are looking at Ireland. They are wondering how did it happen?
It happened for one single reason. We were ambitious. We were bold. We took giant steps. We did not change direction. We took major steps forward.
What created our economic success was not a new discovery of natural resources. What drove our economic success was more education and less tax. What has driven Ireland's economic success is of human creation.
It was not decided on the basis of geography. It was not defined by history. It was decided by Government decision.
But there is nobody in the world that I am aware of who is trying to emulate the resistance to change in certain quarters. Look at what is happening in relation to transport.
There we have a model that was invented in the 1920s and 1930s trying to service the needs of 2004. We can't freeze our transport services in outdated, archaic models.
Nobody is impressed by strikes, work stoppages, or threats of strikes, whether people wear uniforms, white coats, or suits.
We have got to embrace change. We strongly believe in competition between airports. We have confidence in Shannon and Cork. We believe in a second terminal in Dublin Airport. We have total confidence that Dublin can compete in those circumstances.
We want to see competition, too, on bus routes. We believe it will deliver higher standards for the consumer. And I have every confidence that Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann can rise to the challenge and mature as commercial companies when we bring that about.
When I went into politics first one of the biggest things that I was asked to do by my constituents was to get them a telephone. People used to wait five, six, seven years. Today, you could walk into several shops in any town in Ireland and buy any phone you like.
There are more people working now in telecoms than worked in it when we had a single monopoly. Let's do the same in transport. And we will see the benefits for the consumers of transport, for the employees of transport and for our own nation.
Social partnership has delivered an enormous amount of change. It has genuinely played a huge role in the country's transformation. Social partnership in the 1980s rejected the status quo.
It became an agent of change and social partnership can continue to be involved in the transformation of Ireland if it continues to be an agent of change, rather than a brake on change.
If it becomes a brake on change, if we become concerned with the interests of a few rather than the public interest, that is the day our social partnership will wither and cease to be effective. I would appeal to all the players in social partnership, and the Government is one of them, to have courage, to be gutsy, to take on small vested interests and to stand for the public interest.
One area that is really crying out for change is the health service. I don't believe that there is a single person in the country that believes that we can stand still.
We have had plenty of analysis, lots of consultation and, my God, if money could solve the problems there would not be a single problem.
We need radical change, change that will affect every single participant in the health service, doctors, nurses, administrators, and, yes, you and I as patients.
We can continue to have health services spread thinly all around the country. We can do that, but we all know that that is not sustainable.
If we want to have a world-class health service it can only be organised on a regional basis. We cannot provide 24 hours a day consultant services in every town, or even every county in Ireland.
It is not just a question of money. It is a question of population. You won't get a world-class team of doctors unless you have a critical mass in terms of population.
We are developing this country on the basis of regions. We want regional centres of excellence, so that the people of this country have within their regions the best possible standard of healthcare the world and money can deliver.
If we don't, we will end up with inferior services servicing nobody's needs, with poor quality and patchy and unfair systems of health.
Consultants are at the pinnacle of the health service. Their contract will come up for negotiation very shortly. I hope that we will get fair and responsible contracts that we need for all of our people and, in particular, I hope that that contract has the capacity to end the very different way in which public and private patients are treated.
At a time when we are spending over €10 billion on health, it is not justifiable the way public patients are treated and it must stop.
People have to be treated on the basis of health need and on no other basis. That is why we strongly advocated the introduction of the National Treatment Purchase Fund.
Another area where we need change is regarding older people. Our society is ageing. Most old people want to be able to remain in their homes and in their community for as long as possible. They want choice and flexibility..
We need to do more. In a couple of years the Exchequer will be the beneficiary of about half a billion euro per annum in taxes from the Special Savings Accounts.
I believe that the elderly should have the first call on those resources. They built up this nation. They sustained this nation, and it is nothing less than what they deserve as full citizens.
I did say after the last election that insurance was my number one political priority.
We are introducing the new Personal Injuries Assessment Board that will deliver to legitimate claimants what they are entitled to much more quickly. Together with the proposals that Michael McDowell is championing, we are going to succeed in continuing to drive down the high cost of insurance, and we are already seeing results. Premiums are down.
Michael is championing the biggest reform package in our criminal justice system since, I would say, Des O'Malley was in the Department of Justice 30 years ago.
He is reforming the manner in which the Garda functions. He is reforming our prisons. He is reforming our criminal law.
We are a party of reform. We are a party of new ideas. We are a party of change. In Government we are working to deliver social justice.
Social justice means a decent job for everybody who is available for work. Social justice means an end to forced emigration. Social justice means providing opportunities for the disabled, seeing their abilities and not their disabilities.
Social justice means providing a passport to a secure future by having good education. Social justice means having respect for the laws, for the courts, for the gardaí.
We are in Government to make things happen, to effect change. We are not in Government for the sake of being there.
There is an ambitious programme there. And if we can't succeed in having it implemented we won't be there, and we shouldn't be there.
That is the kind of society that I want to see over the next decade.
I hope that 10 years from now we will be able to celebrate the evolvement of that society as much as we celebrate the economic success that today has put this country so proudly on the map right around the globe."
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