Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I ask Deputy Niall Collins to supply the details of the case to me before he leaves the Chamber. Nobody should be denied a PPS number. I will address the matter today.

I am glad that we all can agree but I do not subscribe to the view of certain Deputies that I favour one set of organisations over another. I sit at monthly meetings with both our social partners who represent our union colleagues and our social partners who represent our business colleagues. On most occasions, they have diametrically opposed views, and my job is to sift through the views and decide where the reality lands. While one half of the social partners would tell me the problem is enormous and cite hundreds of millions of euro being lost, which Deputy Brady noted, the other half would tell me there is no problem and that we should carry on as we have always done.

Deputy O'Dea just made a statement that I have finally come around to the view that there is a problem here but for as long as I have sat in this chair - almost two years - I have always acknowledged that there is a problem. I have always prefaced my remarks by saying that I do not know the size of the problem-----

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