Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I enthusiastically support Senator Quinn's request for a debate on competitiveness. However, I hope people will read that study in some detail. There is a tendency to assume competitiveness means inflation when it is a much more complex measure, about which I am quite sceptical. If people want to talk about it, I hope they will discuss the full report which mentions public institutions as one of the issues. Corruption is mentioned also, although I am not supposed to use such words. Let us have a debate, but let us read the breadth of the issue. When I hear people speak about competitiveness, I think it is another word for benchmarking in the minds of most people. That should not be the case.

Yesterday we were assured that two major items of legislation – the Bill to set up the Personal Injuries Assessment Board and the civil liability and courts Bill – would be enacted before the end of the year. I have checked my diary and find that there are six sitting weeks from next Tuesday. These are two major items of legislation. Has the Leader been consulted about a schedule for such major items of legislation? This House is very good at processing legislation. The other House appears to have walked into a morass where the last thing it seems to do is process legislation. We will do our business but if we end up with two major items of legislation around 10 or 12 December and are asked to pass them by 20 December, it is not the way for the Oireachtas to do its business. The Leader ought to go to the Government and say that if it wants this legislation processed, there will have to be a proper time schedule in both Houses of the Oireachtas.

The second matter I wish to raise is an issue which Senators Lydon and Ó Murchú, among others, raised yesterday, the EU proposal on embryonic stem cell research. There is a range of views on this topic. Contrary to stereotype, I probably would be on what would be classified as the conservative side of this argument. However, this is an issue of fundamental values and no Government should be able to go to a European Council meeting and make a decision for this country without the matter having been properly debated in both Houses of the Oireachtas. I am not trying to pre-empt a conclusion, but this is not an issue on which the Government should take advice particularly from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, which is not qualified to make ethical evaluations. Whatever else it is good at, and it is good at many things, making ethical evaluations about something as profound as this is way outside the brief of that Department.