You see, in government, people give you a mandate, and you've got to fulfil that. Ours is very clear. Fix our public finances and get our country working.

My job is to rectify the public finances and hand the country back to the people so they can really have a future, and that is what I will do.

Irish people are pragmatic. They understand that nobody is going to fix our problems but ourselves.

The world has changed utterly. There was a time when you couldn't marry a Protestant. There was a time when you got married that the women had to give up their job in the public service, and when they got married, they were owned by their husbands. That's all changed.

You're not going to be able to deliver jobs locally unless you sort out the nation's problems, and that's why the big and difficult decisions about Ireland's economy have been so crucial and so difficult for people to have to accept and have to deal with, but the reality is the people gave this government an unprecedented mandate.

The U.K. and Ireland are like-minded on E.U. matters, and the process of working together in Brussels has built an immense store of knowledge, personal relationships, and trust between our governments.