Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I wish to make a few comments on the Minister's speech. His speech is tendentious and I will give the House one clear example. On page four the Minister speaks about the famous 163 and the arguments have been well made by other speakers why this is a sledgehammer to crack a nut in terms of the figures. The Minister states: "The figure would indeed be irrelevant if it were a case that around half the female population of child-bearing age as a whole were Irish." That is a very relevant comment but why is it on page three, when the Department officials were putting together all the comparisons between the Irish females, EU national females and non-EU national females, there was no reference to child-bearing age? I know demography is something which is not accepted by Government as being a very acceptable science but it is one of the more precise ones——