The following is an edited version of the Mr Pat Rabbitte's speech to the Labour conference on Saturday night.
I would like to talk to you tonight about Labour's vision for a Fair Society. I want to talk about how Labour will forge a contract with the Irish people to build that Fair Society.
I want to make it clear that Labour will defend the public realm, and that Labour values reject the sort of society reflected in the selfish prism of this PD/FF Government.
If you didn't know before the general election you know now: Fianna Fáil bought your votes with your own money.
Looking back at the Fianna Fáil manifesto, who could blame people for voting for 200,000 additional medical cards? Imagine the comfort those medical cards would have brought to so many families, fearful of going to the doctor because they simply couldn't afford it. Who could blame people for accepting the promise, from the Taoiseach himself, of 2,000 extra gardaí? Parents afraid for the safety of their teenagers at weekends were crying out for a visible Garda presence on our streets.
Who could blame people for finding hope in Mr Ahern's promise to eliminate hospital queues within two years? What happened after the election? Mr Ahern has not delivered one additional medical card. His Government is every week forcing the closure of more hospital beds - a scandalous 250 this week alone. The 2,000 gardaí no longer has even the status of a promise.
Last May, all over Ireland, Fianna Fáil candidates delivered personal letters to households, pledging that local schools would be refurbished, classrooms added or sports halls provided. Hundreds of schools and communities were shamefully deceived.
And what of the promises they never made, but are implementing anyway, with no mandate whatever? How many of you heard the promise to abolish the first-time buyers' grant being debated at election time? How many of you recall the proposal to reintroduce third-level fees being debated? Where in the manifesto was it promised to increase VAT on fuel, energy and housing? At which chapel gate were the merits of savaging the Community Employment Scheme canvassed? On which television programme did Charlie McCreevy announce his decision to dismantle Freedom of Information? Did you miss the radio broadcast by Joe Walsh that he would be closing Teagasc centres throughout the country? Did either party tell you of their intention not to provide one single new place for people with disabilities this year?
Did they say that they were going to starve the drugs strategy of funding? You didn't miss any of these proposals at election time because there were none.
The proposition that the PDs are in Government to contain the excesses of Fianna Fáil is only a fiction. In agreeing to dismantle Freedom of Information, the PDs are providing shelter to Fianna Fáil to revert to the bad old ways of doing business.
In the run-up to the general election, Fianna Fáil and the fiscally retentive PDs squandered tens of millions of your money to buy votes.
Having bought the election they then slashed public spending without any regard to hardship caused or damage done.
Within two weeks of returning to office, what was the first Fianna Fáil cutback? I'll tell you - the first thing they cut was aid to the poor of the developing world.
Meanwhile, special tax breaks are designed for private investors in private hospitals. Residency laws facilitate wealthy tax exiles returning here as they choose. 16,000 sites are handed back to developers rather than enforce the social housing provisions. The new social partnership agreement excludes most of the community sector, with a warning from the Taoiseach that once outside, they will stay outside. And Cheltenham Charlie refuses to tax his friends who own the bloodstock industry.
In any other country in Europe citizens who disagree with that self-serving agenda would vote for the Labour Party. Yet in Ireland many such people voted for Fianna Fáil, partly because they believed the empty rhetoric, and partly because of history.
However, the new stresses and strains of a more wealthy and unequal Ireland have pulled Ahern's Fianna Fáil over to the side of wealth and privilege. Tax breaks for the rich; cuts in public spending; the sale of State assets: these are as much beloved in new Fianna Fáil as they are the staple diet of their partners.
New Fianna Fáil cannot any longer take for granted its traditional support. And it is our great challenge to persuade these people, our natural heartland, "You think Labour, vote Labour".
I am proud of the role our party played in voicing the opposition of the Irish people to the pre-emptive war in Iraq, and in continually asserting the vital need for the voice of the United Nations not to be stilled.
Our target is the next general election. The alternative, the purpose of our social democratic project, must be The Fair Society. The Fair Society means a society based on social justice, sustainable development and personal freedom. It is also a society that fully recognises the importance of efficiency and enterprise as a condition of economic and social development. The Fair Society is supported by a dynamic economy where entrepreneurship and innovation are carefully nurtured.
The Fair Society demands an end to poverty and racial intolerance.
Alongside the new affluence of the Celtic Tiger remains the grim reality of poverty for thousands of families, especially in large pockets in our cities. The Fair Society would focus resources on these areas, make them a real priority for investment, and reverse this Government's dismantling of local initiatives - such as the RAPID Programme.
The Fair Society must be governed openly and honestly. There is no place in the Fair Society for the culture of secrecy and unaccountability Fianna Fáil and the PDs want to reintroduce.
That is why Labour in Government will ensure that the right to Freedom of Information, now so shamefully dismantled, will be restored.
The Fair Society can never be a place where people are ashamed of politics. To people contemplating joining a political party let me say this. No former minister of ours stands accused of abusing elective office or setting up a party political radio station, and no local authority member in our ranks ever put his or her vote up for auction.
The Fair Society is a place where people are safe on their streets and safe in their homes. The Fair Society is a place where parents aren't left to fight the drugs menace from their own resources. In the Fair Society there should be no tolerance for the targeting and exploitation of young people by companies that manufacture certain alcoholic products, deadly poisonous in their impact, but designed specifically to be marketed almost as harmless fun for teenagers.
The Fair Society will require us to confront some hard questions on drugs, crime and policing. And yes - we do need more gardaí - especially community gardaí.
But the time has come, in the interests of the whole community including the Garda itself, for a new Garda Authority, a fully independent Garda ombudsman and structures to ensure that the gardaí are fully responsive to local communities. We all supported Patten in Northern Ireland. I would welcome Patten down here now.
The Fair Society regards the taxation system as a vehicle for building the world-class healthcare, housing, transport and public services our people are entitled to in return for a fair and equitable contribution through tax. Unlike the PDs, the Fair Society would not see fair taxation as confiscation of private wealth. In the Fair Society we would all accept that it is time to get real about closing off the tax loopholes and to put a stop to the creation of new secretive tax breaks.
It is time that investors paid tax at the same rate as those who work, not half the rate as at present. Nor can The Fair Society tolerate tax-exempt status for those favoured citizens who leave their calling card in the Fianna Fáil tent at the Galway Races.
It is time for a government that has sufficient confidence in the Irish economy to invest in public services and infrastructure. That may well mean prudent and careful borrowing to build the major capital projects that underpin our future.
In the name of the Fair Society Labour is committed to a Disability Bill containing real enforceable rights.
At the core of the Fair Society is education. The Fair Society is a place where every child, irrespective of income, can find knowledge to reach the limit of their potential. A system that re-erects barriers to participation in third-level education has no place in the Fair Society.
Life-long learning is not a new concept for the Labour movement, we have been committed to it for more than a century. We are proud to have made third-level education free, and if we have to, we will do it again, as one of our first priorities in government.
Colleagues, I believe that there is a majority out there for a strong and dynamic economy, high-quality public services and an equitable welfare state. In other words I repeat my conviction that a majority of the electorate think Labour but don't vote Labour.
We haven't always made it easy for them. We haven't always acknowledged the change that has happened in Ireland over 30 years.
For example, as a result of wider participation in education, there are now hundreds of thousands of people who enjoy, or aspire to, middle-class lifestyles. This doesn't mean that they are lost to the Labour Party unless we act and talk as if they were.
We have to adapt to the new Ireland that we ourselves helped to create.
That means, for example, accepting that modern citizens as taxpayers are often more conscious of themselves as consumers and customers than they are preoccupied with ownership structures of any given enterprise.
The people can determine when this incompetent, arrogant, jaded Government gets its comeuppance.
The people can choose policies and values for the future of their children.
The people can build the Fair Society.
It is our task, as our slogan says, to put the people in power. The success of our final course will rest in your hands.
The full text of Mr Rabbitte's speech is available on The Irish Times website www.ireland.com