Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

The newly elected first woman Chancellor in Germany, Angela Merkel, sees the European Union as a partner to Germany and not as an opposite bloc to the United States. Is it the Taoiseach's intention to meet with the new German Chancellor? Obviously the restoration of a strong economy in Germany is of major influence in terms of the European Union.

The Lisbon Agenda, to which the Taoiseach previously referred, is obviously not being completed in the way EU leaders had envisaged. The European entity is very much behind the United States in terms of job creation. In this country there are 300,000 people working in manufacturing services. That is the same number as seven years ago, except that almost a third of those jobs are new, demonstrating that one has to work very hard to stand still. In a European context and given the fact that we do not have any university in the top 250 on the world list, how does the Taoiseach see the pressures on manufacturing services being affected by European leaders' decisions in terms of making it easier for companies to do their business? Given the anti-competitive costings that now apply to many Irish manufacturing services, how does he see that challenge being addressed both in Ireland and from a European perspective?

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