Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte last night claimed his party would not increase taxes if elected at the next election.
He told his party conference in Dublin that it was now up to them to convince voters they need an alternative, with Labour and Fine Gael ready to join forces to take the seats.
Mr Rabbitte identified the health service and particularly the A&E crisis as a top priority once elected, along with disarming the drug gangs in west Dublin and putting high visibility garda patrols on the streets.
Promising to keep taxes down, Mr Rabbitte told the conference that in a successful economy with buoyant revenues, there was "no need to increase taxation and Labour has no intention of doing so."
"People will vote for an alternative government that shows a capacity to listen and makes an honest effort to ease the pressures of modern living," he said in his keynote speech.
"If our people want change, and I believe that they do, it can only happen if we get rid of the two parties in Government. It's not just that the meat in the sandwich is rancid and sour, the entire sandwich is soggy and stale.
"The people gave Fianna Fail and PDs nine years and billions of taxpayers' money to improve the health services. What we got is a national emergency."
"Is it that difficult to make the hospitals work, to get the traffic moving and to ensure that we are safe on the streets and in our homes? "If we produce some of the best doctors and nurses in the world, who have travelled under the plain flag of humanitarianism to the furthest corners of the globe: surely we can provide a decent health service at home.
"If, for generations our people across the world have designed, planned and built every kind of road, railway and highway you can imagine, then we can build roads, bridges and railways here at home.
"If the men and women of our Defence Forces and Garda Siochana are keeping the peace and protecting civilian populations from East Timor to Liberia under the flag of the United Nations, then we can protect our people at home, police our communities and tackle anti-social behaviour.
"If we can disarm militias in West Africa, we can disarm drug gangs in West Dublin."
When it comes to healthcare, he said that Labour in government would accept responsibility and not hide behind the HSE. He also announced a five-point plan to tackle the crisis - more beds, clean hospitals, local care where possible, an end to tax breaks for private clinics in public hospitals and a change in funding to let money follow the patient.
Mr Rabbitte said: "Fianna Fail and the PDs, for nine years, have failed to reform the Health Service they have published strategy after strategy, made promise after promise, done somersault after somersault and at the end of it all your ageing parent is likely to be left on a trolley for days."
But health alone is not the only problem in the current leadership, he said. "Crime and the Minister for Justice are both out of control," he continued. We are the only state in Europe where the gardai outside the Minister's house are there to protect the public from the Minister.
"While the Minister lectures, crime is worsening and detection and conviction rates are falling." He added Labour and Fine Gael have agreed a set of proposals for Dail reform.