Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I apologise as I will have to leave the meeting fairly soon to attend another meeting but I will return after that. I welcome our guest speaker. He is right that there is always a danger that we would go from one extreme to the other, in other words, from having virtually no regulation to over-regulation. However, in our economic situation which is recovering I would warn that we could find ourselves in the same position once again whereby there would be a tendency to overlook the necessity for regulation and find ourselves in a difficult situation down the road.

I particularly draw attention to the period prior to the introduction of the European semester whereby there was a five- or seven-year period without adequate monitoring of the trends that were beginning to emerge. That was a big fault at the time, and I made this criticism previously. We waited until the end of the term before action was taken and it was then too late.

I consider the semester system to be much better in that it gives an opportunity for an annual review of progress. It is not rocket science to determine which way the economies of European Union member states are going.

We need to get more recognition for our own efforts in this country and for the efforts of the people of this country. For instance, we came from a really serious annual budget deficit of 15% or 17%. We reached a peak total debt of 125% of GDP, which has come down dramatically, and the budget deficit is ahead of projections. Our total indebtedness is coming down rapidly. There is a need for a recognition of the efforts made by those in this country by the rest of the European Union, because some countries have made those efforts while some have not, to my mind. As we are intrinsically interlinked with each other in our fortunes and our futures, economically, socially and politically, it is important that we encourage all other countries to follow what appears to be best practice in order to achieve the result that is required as quickly as possible.

My final point is about the workforce. I do not think lone parents or parents should be forced into the workforce. There should be a provision whereby one person in the household should at least have an opportunity to be at work, and the second person should also have such an opportunity if possible. The most important factor is that the second person should not be forced into the workforce by virtue of high mortgage repayments, which means that all he or she is doing is working for the repayment of the mortgage, perhaps to the detriment of his or her health.

I do not accept the notion that lone parents are reluctant to go to work. I have never had any experience of that. Like other colleagues, I have dealt with thousands of lone parents over the years, and I have never once seen a situation in which there was a reluctance to go to work. On the contrary, there was every indication that lone parents wished to go to work at the earliest possible opportunity. As soon as this was possible, either by means of child care or when their children were at school, they went into the workplace very quickly for reasons of their own satisfaction.