Liam Fitzgerald (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and the many things he said about education. He made projections about a number of areas which were identified as ones where we could perform better in terms of international comparative analysis. I welcome reports, such as the OECD report, because international comparative analysis is important in terms of telling us where we stand and how we compare to our neighbours and competitors. It has been important since it started 40 or 50 years ago, but it is even more important now because of rapidly changing global markets. Globalisation is rampant. As people travel more, international influences are brought to bear on countries, such as our own. We need to know how individuals, citizens and members of our society are coping with the aggregate of international influences.

Senator Ulick Burke was extremely scant in his acknowledgement of the praise proffered in the report for the current state of Irish education. One would think from some of the views he expressed that our education system was still experiencing the doom and gloom of the early and mid-1980s. I remind him that our Government brought the education system, many other services and the economy out of the doom and gloom of the early and mid-1980s and into the boom of the 1990s and the millennium. Listening to Senator Ulick Burke, I became confused about whether I had read the right report.