Brendan Ryan (Labour)

We do not trust it when we have a public vote. While we vote in public we still want a paper record verified by four Members, yet we are telling the electorate that this will not be available to it. Why are we so different from the electorate?

Representatives of the OECD recently visited this country as part of a review of higher education. Many bodies, including the Higher Education Authority, the Department of Education and Science, directors of institutes of technology, and presidents of university made submissions to the OECD. Yet again, the voice of the Houses of the Oireachtas has not been heard. Members have a variety of views and experience of higher education. I seek a debate on the future of higher education in the short term. Having completed the debate, we should send a transcript to the OECD to represent the views of Members on the issue.

A considerable amount of extraordinary and self-serving nonsense is being fed to the OECD. The submission of the HEA is about how important it is that the body be maintained. The submission of the Department of Education and Science is about how important it is to stop it from increasing funding for third level education. The political process ought to be involved in this. I call on the Leader to provide a debate on higher education in the immediate future.

We should have a debate on democracy on this island as a matter of urgency. We are getting into murky waters when in one guise people can celebrate the achievements of an illegal organisation while in another guise pretend they have nothing to do with the organisation when it starts kidnapping and beating up people. There is a need for clarity on this issue. I am tired of lectures from people who claim to be on the same part of the political spectrum as me. I do not believe there is anything sufficiently wrong in this country to justify beating up or killing a single person. This is the difference between my party and Sinn Féin.