Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)

The Minister can figure that one out for himself. Many others have not had a chance to learn about the political system and they are at a disadvantage. That makes our job more difficult in terms of explaining why decisions are made or why money is taken away from a certain sector. I accept efforts have been made by the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission to go to schools, and that is excellent work, but many people are not being reached with explanations of how politics works and we have a duty to inform them. That will be of great benefit.

People are interested in politics. When party conferences such as the Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis or the Fine Gael Ard-Fheis take place, telephone calls to the office are reduced because people know from listening to the radio that we are away. When the banking crisis occurred my telephone messages decreased by up to 70% because people knew we were doing other things. People are interested and they are aware and we have a duty to formulate the information in an interesting way on radio, television or by other means.

Reference was made to the Oireachtas television channel. That will be of great benefit to the Joint Committee on European Scrutiny and other committees because people will be able to see what is happening. From what the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, said, he hopes it will be exciting and that an editor can show different parts of committees and make things look action packed rather than just the same old boring stuff. I hope that will help. Oireachtas television is a couple of years away but we must try to work on it. In the meantime, we must discuss with RTE and other television stations how we can have more and better coverage of politics.

If we had proper media coverage of debates, especially on EU legislation, the Lisbon treaty would be passed. In this regard, we failed to have sufficiently knowledgeable people on radio programmes. I do not include the Minister of State in this because he is well up to speed. Those who spoke on radio programmes were not convincing enough for us to win the argument. People repeatedly make decisions on the basis of what they hear in the media. We need to exploit the media as much as possible in the shorter and longer term. People will be interested in what we have to say.

Many of the subjects we discussed in the House were very interesting to ordinary urban and rural Members and the debates were very informative. When I brought information back to my constituents, they found it very interesting. Many of the debates with Ryanair are interesting because that company throws the cat among the pigeons, but that is what is needed. The same applies in the area of food.

Many interesting discussions have taken place, including one on the safety of toys, which is relevant at this time. As 500 EU legislative measures are dealt with each year, one can conclude there is a lot more happening than occurs in this House. We are lucky if we see 15 or 20 legislative measures from the European Union pass through the House in a year. There is much action at EU level and we need to sell this to the people. The process should begin with our own colleagues, who should be in the House contributing to this debate. I hope that, in a month, there will be greater interest in these matters and that it will be worth people's while getting involved.

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