Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge and I am acutely aware that the Government and the country are facing significant challenges in respect of housing, which we discussed earlier, the cost of living, health, climate change and many other important issues, and I look forward to getting out about the country to debate these issues in the time ahead. However, it is important to meet head-on the narrative that the Deputy and her hard-left wing colleagues, along with Sinn Féin, are peddling: that the history of Ireland in the last century is somehow a history of failure and that Ireland is some sort of a failed state. That is a pernicious, insidious lie. The truth is that we have come from being one of the of the most poverty stricken countries in the 1920s to now having one of the highest standards of living in the world, with more people in employment than ever before. These are good jobs. In the past 30 years, the number of people in high-skilled employment has increased by 150%. I know the Deputy genuinely does not have an interest in this. I have noticed that over the past nine years and noticed the views of the party she represents.

The story of our success in attracting leading global firms to the country is talked about around the world. That is what we spent our time doing. The economic model in this country has worked and it should be debated in this election. I believe in the economic model that has attracted enterprise into the country and allowed native enterprise to develop and grow. Less well known, but equally uninteresting to the Deputy, is that our indigenous companies are among the most productive in all of Europe. For every job created in Ireland by a foreign company, Irish-domiciled companies create more than one elsewhere. This makes us one of the top five nations in the world for creating overseas jobs. We are exporting more goods than ever before and we are world leaders in food and drink exports. We export 90% of what we produce and our goods are shipping to more markets and further across the world than ever before.

That economic success has given us the resources to bring about an equally powerful social, educational and health transformation in that 100 years. We now have an education system that is one of the strongest in Europe and the world. The number of children at secondary level and school completion rates are tops across the European Union and the world more generally. Pupil-teacher ratios have never been better.

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