Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

The Government is engaged in a great deal of codology here about this document. Everybody has the document. It is in the newspapers. We know what is in it.

The Taoiseach came in here yesterday and read into the record of the House approximately 60% of what is in the document anyway as his script to this House, but without telling the House that it was much of the text of what was being supplied to the social partners.

The Government has a choice here and it needs to make up its mind. On the one hand it comes in and states it wants the co-operation of the House and wants to act by consensus and then it goes on with this kind of nonsensical game playing where it will not level with the House about what is being proposed and what is the status of the document.

I ask the Tánaiste the following because she has not yet answered the question. Will the document be laid before the House? That is only a formality now anyway but it is an important formality because it enables us to refer to the document in order here and would make the Ceann Comhairle's life much easier. Second, when will it be laid before the House?

I want to raise one or two other issues. I have been asking the Taoiseach for the past two days to tell us what is the total cost to the Exchequer of the additional people who have become unemployed and the additional 100,000 who, the Taoiseach now acknowledges, will be unemployed by the end of this year.

I accepted on Tuesday that the Taoiseach did not have the exact figures to hand when he was answering my question, but I assume the Government has calculated what this is and I am surprised that two days later I have not been provided with that information. Will I be provided with that information, the total cost of the additional unemployment, between social welfare payments, secondary benefits and lost tax revenue?

I also ask the Tánaiste to clarify something the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Deputy Mary Hanafin, stated on radio this morning. Up until now we had been led to believe, and the figures from the CSO etc. told us, that there were an additional 120,000 unemployed since this time last year. The Minister stated on radio this morning that it was 140,000. Perhaps that was a slip of the tongue, which I am prepared——

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