Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

It is good that the situation has stabilised following the early September elections in Germany. It is also good that Angela Merkel has been elected Chancellor and that an administration is in place. She has gone to meet President Chirac on her first visit, obviously to show that this strong axis of Europe that has been in existence for so many decades will continue under her leadership. That is the way it has been presented in Germany and in France this morning. I previously wrote to congratulate her and I wrote again yesterday following her election as Chancellor. I look forward to meeting her at an early date, as soon as that proves possible.

What Deputy Kenny said about the Lisbon Agenda is correct. We will now be heading to the Spring Council and even though it is six years since the then Portuguese Prime Minister, Antonio Gutierrez, started the Lisbon strategy, while there has been implementation of many aspects of it, employment has not been a good one in many countries in Europe, including the major economies where unemployment is in excess of 10%. These countries have not been able to get any kind of bounce out of the initiatives of the Lisbon Agenda.

Many of the issues have been completed but there are areas of deficiency where the Americans still have a clear lead on us, such as in research and development and in the range and way in which they manage to develop so many different aspects of their economy. They have done that very successfully and continue to do it. Manufacturing jobs in Europe will continue to decline for the simple reason that in Bangalore in south-eastern China people are working for a euro or two a day as compared to our equivalent rate. This will not happen anywhere in Europe. People are still working 12 hours a day, six days a week. The labour market and technology in China is top class due to the investment it has got from many parts of the world. Therefore, European manufacturing in many traditional sectors in particular will not be able to compete. There is no possibility that this will change. Therefore, we must continue to do what we have been successfully doing here, although it is demanding, that is to go up the scale, get value-added and upgrade skills.

Traditional manufacturing jobs must now become sophisticated technology jobs. This is the part of the world in which medicines and drugs are now being made. In all these categories we are up there with the top quality in the world. This is creating a different kind of job. Where one time we would have just been involved in packing and distribution, drugs, chemicals and surgical devices are being made in this country and moved around the world. This is also the case with information and communications technology in the wider world, in the new bio-pharma plants like Wyeth and the extensions to a number of others. This is where the jobs are for the future. Unfortunately, the days of manufacturing clothes, plastics, buttons, sweets and other such industries are gone and we will not be able to compete in these areas.

Deputy Kenny's last point was about competitiveness. We must strive to win in every area where we can be competitive. In the education sector our universities are still doing very well, as is the case with training and in our aptitude to work. I accept there are arguments about the top 250 universities. Many of these universities operate very tight faculties. They take just a few faculties and develop them at the expense of everything else. The facts can be overstated. If these universities were as great as the list suggested, how come the leaders of the world in business and banking are not graduates of those universities? I have my doubts about these issues. When one looks at some of the universities and checks around at where the top people in the world are, how come they are not graduates of those universities if they are all they are made out to be? The best of luck to them.

We have to continue to develop our universities in Europe to the best of our ability and have more collaboration between them. It is very important that people work together in research and development. In fairness to the universities on the island of Ireland they now all work far more closely together, which is good. They have moved away from the sensitivities of the past. Now, whenever we meet them in Government they are meeting together. They are working on joint programmes, research efforts, the programme for research in third level institutions, PRTLI, and Science Foundation Ireland. These groups are working and bidding for those universities in a very positive way that is working successfully.

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