Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

Like previous speakers, I welcome the Bill which is a positive and constructive step. I accept that it has taken somewhat longer to appear than many on both sides of the negotiations might perhaps have desired. However, a difficult labour is no blot on the arrival of a new child and we welcome the legislation nevertheless.

The Bill before us builds on the work done by a departing generation of Irish-American politicians. Such politicians maintained a tradition which dates back to the 1850s and Clan na Gael, Clan na hÉireann, etc., which maintained support for Ireland in the context of its subservient position vis-À-vis England and the Crown. No one gave as much in respect of this tradition as the late Senator Ted Kennedy and other members of his family. The work he and others did culminated in the extraordinary contribution of Senator George Mitchell in presiding over the entire peace process. The Senator was present when the ceasefire was announced and he worked through the long nights of negotiation that led to the advent of the British-Irish Agreement.

The unresolved political relationships between the North and the South on this island and between Dublin and London defined what Irish America could do for Ireland in those dark days. Such days are now over. The US-Ireland Alliance and the George Mitchell Scholarship Fund form the platform on which a new relationship is being built. The wording used by the alliance does not refer to supporting the old sod, rather it refers to a relationship of equality and mutual benefit between Ireland and the United States.

I echo the comments on my friend and colleague, Deputy Jimmy Deenihan, in saluting the extraordinary work done by Trina Vargo - who is present in the Gallery - in promoting the idea of the US-Ireland Alliance and in succeeding in encouraging so many people to come on board and support it. Such work is never easy to undertake and persistence and determination are required characteristics for those who do seek to undertake it. Fortunately, Ms Vargo possesses both.

I wish to focus on the work of the Mitchell scholarship programme and put a number of questions to the Minister of State, Deputy Seán Haughey. I appreciate that the Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, is otherwise detained. It is extraordinary that 117 students have come to Ireland under the programme since 1999 and that the majority of them were funded from sources other than the Irish funds. The US-Ireland Alliance was successful in raising money from the sources to which I refer. In many cases, people who failed to obtain Mitchell scholarships decided - as a result of what they saw in respect of Irish universities - that they wanted to come here in any event.

Some 300 applications for Mitchell scholarships are made each year and 70 universities receive visits from the US-Ireland Alliance in the context of what is on offer at Irish universities. As the Minister of State indicated, 10 million people who have no connection to Ireland - the old sod - whatsoever, who do not wear shamrock on 17 March, and who did not take compulsory Irish dancing lessons in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, or elsewhere have expressed an interest in coming to this country to study. These individuals have done so based on the image of Ireland presented to them rather than from what they learned at the knees of their grandmothers. It is this kind of new relationship - based on realism and idealism - which we must nurture and develop. I wish to concentrate on outlining how that might happen.

The Minister of State indicated that his Department will be setting up a centre of excellence to establish Ireland as a centre of international study. Due to the fact that the time for debating the Bill is limited, we may return to explore that matter further at a later date, particularly in view of the fact that I am not at all impressed by what the Department is attempting to do. Giving to Enterprise Ireland - based on what the Minister, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, witnessed while on a trade mission to China - the responsibility for promoting this country as the type of centre to which the Minister of State refers will not provide us with the best way forward.

Having served as Minister for Enterprise and Employment in the 1990s, I remain to be convinced that the Department - which is now the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment - sees education or culture as part and parcel of job creation. There is evidence to suggest that its real focus is on jobs which involve people who wear overalls and who work on industrial estates or in high-tech plants and software factories. I am not so sure that this should be the basis of Enterprise Ireland's focus.

There are people who are actively working against the Department of Education and Science in the context of attracting students to this country. What is the position with regard to someone who was unsuccessful in his or her application for a Mitchell scholarship but who comes here in any event? I am aware of the case of a Canadian citizen in my constituency who is studying medicine at Trinity College. She is paying €31,000 in fees for the privilege. Her husband accompanied her to Ireland and he currently has a job. However, he will not be in a position to continue to work when his 12-month contract reaches its end.

The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform is continually blocking the efforts of the Department of Education and Science to facilitate students such as the woman to whom I refer. There must be joined-up thinking on the part of Government in respect of facilitating students - some of whom may have been accompanied by spouses or dependent children - to remain in this country. I am aware of cases involving postgraduate medical students whose spouses cannot obtain visas in order that they might come here to live with them. These people were never informed, not by the Department of Education and Science but rather the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, that this would be the case. If we want to pursue the idea of promoting Ireland as a centre for international educational excellence, we will be obliged to take action with regard to the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, which is putting in place serious barriers in respect of what we are seeking to achieve.

When we emerge from our current economic crisis and begin to build a new, export-led, value-added economy - unlike the boom-bust, property-speculative model which obtained in the past ten years - we will be obliged to look to our strengths. Culture and entertainment are two of those strengths. This was recently evidenced by the awards given to graduates from Ballyfermot College who are involved in movie animation. Is the Minister of State aware that Enterprise Ireland has failed, on a number of occasions, to sustain and support a cultural initiative to showcase Irish talent on the margins of the Oscar ceremonies, where we have enjoyed such high-profile success, held each year in California, which is the centre of the movie business? I suspect that he is not so aware because this matter would not necessarily be part of his brief. Why is that the case? It is because Enterprise Ireland does not report to the Department of Education and Science. I accept that the Departments of Education and Science and Enterprise, Trade and Employment enjoy a particular relationship. With respect, however, that is not the kind of relationship we need if we are to achieve the outcomes we are seeking.

The Bill is a welcome step. It is, however, only a step. It represents not the end, but rather the commencement of a journey. We must add to the cohort of people who will be doing the kind of work to which I refer. We need to find more people like Ms Trina Vargo in the United States. We need to build on her commitment. We must also build on her experience of working for so many years with the late Senator Ted Kennedy and with that old Irish-American support bloc, which - with the arrival of President Barack Obama and the shift in the population base of the United States to the south and west - no longer reflects the "mother mo chroí" relationship we had with America in the past.

We must recognise that Irish-Americans have moved out of the ghettos of the past and are now part of mainstream America. They are part of an America that has distant connections with the greenery of Ireland. It was that greenery which encouraged people to visit this country in the past. We must understand the changed cultural and political relationship that now exists between Ireland and the United States. It is a relationship of mutual benefit and this scholarship should be a foundation upon which we can add and build. The total of 12 scholars coming each year is pretty small when one looks at what the Rhodes scholarship does for 200 students and other areas through which such scholars could come to Ireland. Excellent scholars coming to our universities and centres of higher education will provide a competitive edge and a standard of excellence from another jurisdiction of education with which we are not familiar.

With those few words, and I could say much more, I commend the Bill. We will table a few amendments on Committee Stage. The Department of Education and Science should not take the Bill as the end of a process after two or three years of negotiation. I seriously and formally ask the Minister of State, given his two-hatted responsibility, to take up the question of the relationship between Enterprise Ireland and both the educational goals of the Department of Education and Science and the US-Ireland Alliance because the current relationship is not doing all it possibly could. It could create work, employment and production possibilities in the cultural field where we can play to our strengths and the United States can play to theirs.

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