Tom Kitt (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)

Deputy Higgins strayed from the question on statistics as he knows from his involvement in this part of Question Time. I will do my best to deal with his questions.

Deputy Higgins started on the issue of the population and moved on from there. He would agree that it is a fantastic reflection of Ireland's success as an economy that 50,000 Polish people have come here to work. Our responsibility as Europeans is to look after them and provide them with jobs, and that is being done. Deputy Higgins and I will meet them in all sectors of the Irish economy and they are making a positive contribution, as are others all over the world and outside the European Union.

To follow on from that, one tries to provide people with jobs and housing. Deputy Higgins may not like private sector building but there is house building at all levels and every effort is made to deal with the issues of affordable and social housing. If one examines overall housing, one sees the industry has built 70,000 units per annum. I can give many examples to illustrate the broader picture of what is happening in the economy. Deputy Higgins asked about the needs of these people. We must look after them. Those of us who are out and about, meet them and can see that they are successfully integrating into Irish society.

There are pressures on schools and on health care. If we were to analyse it we would see that much of this pressure is due to the fact that we have a rapidly increasing population. The population has increased by 12.3% to 4 million people in the period from 1995 to 2004. It is the second highest rate of increase in the European Union and was significantly higher than the average of the 25 member European Union of just 2.2%.

See this speech in context