LABOUR leader Eamon Gilmore accused Taoiseach Brian Cowen of making a “self-serving’’ contribution to the confidence debate.

Mr Gilmore said Mr Cowen had delivered the most shameless speech he had heard in the Dáil for a long time.

“This was the thickest exercise in hard-neck politics I have heard in a long time. It was all about the Government, justifying its action and performance and term of office.’’

Mr Gilmore said he had heard very little about the problems facing the State, including the 440,000 people on the Live Register, the highest number ever.

“Even in the worst of days ever, in the 1930s and 1950s, it never reached a figure like that. Some 250,000 people lost their jobs since the Government was elected in 1997 and, in many cases, their redundancy money is now gone.’’ Hundreds of businesses had gone to the wall and many more were trying to survive. “People working in them and running them tell me it has been months since they were able to take personal payment from their businesses,’’ he said.

Families were trying to pay mortgages on properties in negative equity, while young graduates were worried, as were their parents, about the prospect of getting employment.

Pensioners were worried they would be next on the Government’s target list, said Mr Gilmore.

The closest Mr Cowen had come to accepting any responsibility was when he spoke about the two reports published last week and how they blamed “governments’’. He asked where Mr Cowen had got the plural.

“He has been in government for the past 13 years,’’ said Mr Gilmore. “He was minister for finance for four of those years and Taoiseach for more than two. There is no plural.’’

Mr Gilmore said his party would not vote confidence in Mr Cowen because, like the Irish people, Labour had long ago lost confidence in him and his Government. “We want Fianna Fáil and the Green Party out of Government; we want a general election; we want a fresh start for the country and we want to move on as do the vast majority of the people in this country.’’

Mr Gilmore warned that TDs could not vote confidence in Mr Cowen and then go back to constituents and try to distance themselves from that vote.

“Any deputy who votes confidence in the Taoiseach and his Fianna Fáil-Green Party Government must take responsibility, as must the Taoiseach.’’

Mr Gilmore said that for as long as Fianna Fáil remained in Government, it would be preoccupied with self-justification, defending its record and self-preservation.

“I heard one Minister say at the weekend that he could not remember ever making a mistake,’’ he added. “Apparently the Taoiseach cannot remember making any mistakes either.’’

He said the State would not be able to tackle its problems with a Government serving out its notice, clinging on to power in the faint hope that some kind of recovery would revive its political fortunes while the rest of Irish society was expected to contract mass amnesia.

Mr Gilmore said that a government was required to focus on three core tasks: creating jobs, reforming the way the State was governed and restoring fairness to the management of its affairs.

“Economic recovery will not come on its own and it will not come by focusing exclusively on rescuing the banks and dealing with the public finances,’’ said Mr Gilmore.