The leader of the Green Party has told delegates at their annual conference in Cork that it is time the incompetence and lack of vision within the current Government was brought to an end, describing the political regime in one word as "chancers".
Trevor Sargent issued a warning to other parties who might think the Greens were there just to make up numbers in any future possible political alliance.
"If the other parties don't appreciate the need for serious change in this country then I'm quite prepared to walk away, let them think it over and come back to me.
"I don't want any position in a Government that will be just arranging deckchairs."
Mr Sargent said: "The legacy of this government is incompetence, corruption, neglect and squander."
"The reality is that they have misspent the profits from our boom and are too long in power to even see the extent of their own extravagant waste.
"Like true chancers Fianna Fail will break the rules as long as they think they can get away with it, whether ignoring EU einviormental directives until the international courts shame us or taking money from people in nursing homes until the Supreme Court says stop, there is never a sense of them doing the right thing simply for the sake of it," he said.
Mr Sargent accused the government of 'greenwashing' their policies, by putting all the right green messages on their packaging and advertising while changing nothing in the core product.
He told delegates that "we are at a key point in the evolution of green politics. If we are to achieve real change then the time has come for Green politics to take a hold of the decision making process."
The party leader also accused the Progressive Democrats of being committed to an "Animal Farm" agenda saying it had brazenly categorised the Irish family as a "unit of production". He said they were only elected to keep an eye on Fianna Fail, but "have morphed back into the same old Fianna Fail mould".
But Mr Sargent said the Green Party now presented a real viable alternative to the people. Citing Finland, where the Greens have been in government for seven out of the last ten years, Mr Sargant said it is possible to invest in public social capital and at the same time encourage private investment and enterprise.
He said the Party would fight the next election on the basis of positive values and a proven policy platform. "We believe that the Irish people need a strong Green input in Government. "The Green Party is serious about the business of throwing this government out of office and working with other parties to provide a business-like and genuinely caring alternative government."
He said the message that must go out from Cork today was that the Greens will be good for business as Ireland needs every ounce of enterprise to meet the challenges the country faces.
But he warned the business world to "get real".
"The realities of climate change and the end of cheap oil mean the future of enterprise lies in this new world order," he added.