Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

Yes. There was a famous professor from Cork in the Seanad when I started out, who argued that condoms could be as dangerous as liqueur chocolates were in their day, when he had originally spoken on the Intoxicating Liquor Act. History would want to be charitable to him.

I will be brief in replying to the Minister. What I have to say is important. When people speak about cost-benefit analysis, they are not talking only about monetary consequences but also about social consequences. The next Government, and those that follow it, must test everything they do for its job creation potential and economic activity, measured in social terms. Perhaps it is because I am leaving the Dáil, and I hope its officials will forgive me, but after my long analysis over the years of the officials in the Department of Finance, I feel they need to move on. They must accept the theoretical thinking that cost-benefit analysis must be considered in view of the social dimension rather than just the narrow economic one. I also think they must abandon the Sir Humphrey principle that if it is good we have considered it and if it is not good we did not bother with it. The fact of the matter is that they, too, occasionally make mistakes. It is important that the Department is entirely open to testing new measures. I say this with no enmity but solely with the intention of being practical.

More recent events are in my favour in this regard. For example, if we consider what Regling and Watson suggest were the consequences of measures whose implications were relatively unexamined, they allude, frankly, to matters that are social. I am not saying - because I would be quickly corrected - that the Department of Finance is unaware of social implications, but I can say without any contradiction that both the Department of Finance and economic and social-----

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