John Dennehy (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

We are doing extremely well. The bottom line is that the courageous political decision to take billions of euro out of the economy and put it aside for the future has been taken. Opposition parties have stated they would raid this fund and invest the money elsewhere if they were in power. More needs to be done on pensions. I ask the Minister to continue to work on pension needs by encouraging younger people to take out pensions, which is difficult. When most of us were introduced to pensions when we were young, we said it was not for us and we would deal with them down the road.

The Minister should keep up the good work on the carers issue. This issue is close to my own heart and he has done tremendously well in this regard. Deputy Woods began the process and the Minister has taken it on in a big way. I ask him to maintain his work over the next four or five years and adopt a long-term programme. I would dread to think that we could lose control of that issue and carers would be back where they were ten years ago.

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