John Dennehy (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

He has also negotiated all-island travel. There will be a more regular transfer of people from the South to the North and vice versa. This will be of benefit because ordinary people will have a far greater exchange of views and opinions. Those of us who joined the British-Irish Interparliamentary Body in 1990 were fascinated by the lack of knowledge of our counterparts in Westminster about how we live and behave in the South. The same is true of many residents of the northern part of the country. The all-island travel programme will have the added benefit of securing greater integration so we will realise we all live on the one island, are the same race and have the same hopes and fears.

I was interested that some speakers mentioned improvements that could be made to the pensions system because no one has done more on pensions than this Government. I remember adverse comment from the Opposition benches when the then Minister for Finance, Mr. McCreevy, decided to put away a large amount of Exchequer funding for future pension needs. Previous Ministers had used this money for various infrastructural projects and so on in the past but the funding was put aside to meet the needs of future pensioners. I had been hearing for years about the pensions time bomb but nobody throughout Europe did anything or cared too much about it until the former Minister got a grip on it and put the money aside. Opposition finance spokespersons were hugely critical because of the downturn in the stock market, which affected equities. Property investors were doing much better and the Government parties were told they had invested incorrectly. Lo and behold, the position reversed completely and the benefit has doubled but nobody is saying, "Well done Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats".

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