Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

Social partnership has also allowed companies to grow and expand, thereby creating an additional 1 million jobs in the economy during this period. At the same time, it created the economic climate which enabled us to move away from the conditions which existed when social partnership began, when there was an unemployment rate of more than 17%, with more than 10% in long-term unemployment. At present, we have one of the lowest unemployment rates in Europe. Moreover, at 1%, our rate of long-term unemployment is one of the lowest in the OECD. Social partnership has also allowed the creation of resources to allow us to expand all our services, including welfare services, pensions services, helping our old and young people, expanding health and education and everything in between. While I would like to find something in the Deputy's comments with which I can agree, I cannot.

I refer to the Deputy's comments regarding employers and improvements to our legislation. While we have a good stock of labour legislation, we have devoted most of our time in these talks to efforts to address issues pertaining to immigration, to ensure we can improve legislation to deal with the new situation in the economy, whereby we have moved from a small to a large number of non-Irish workers, and to provide the necessary protective legislation.

As I stated in my reply, we have achieved a good package of measures. Although they are not complete, we have certainly travelled a long way down the line.

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