Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I fully agree the topical issue of the day is the visit of the American President. We need to deal with it in a sensible way, which is not to spend too much time talking about the visit, because he is coming, but to lay out the agenda. Rather than focus this debate on whether we are insulting the American people and the American President, who is the elected President and who is coming here for a meeting which will take place regardless of whether we like it, what I and most Irish people would like to see is the Taoiseach, the President of the European Council, come away from the meeting and state the issues that were raised. I would like those issues to include the American relationship with the United Nations and its lack of support for it, the problems arising from the lack of human and civil rights in Guantanamo Bay, the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto Agreement and the point raised by Senator Finucane about Irish immigrants in the United States, which is crucial and which might make our people more sensitive to what is going on in this country. If progress can be made on those issues and if we can focus the debate on them rather than on the simple one of the visit — President Bush is coming, like it or lump it, and the meeting will take place — we should see what we can make of it. We can at least say to the American people that this is why we are concerned and these are the foreign policy issues we want to raise and to which we seek a response. This is how we can build a bridge between developed western Europe and the United States of America on those particular issues.

On a separate issue, the wage element of a new national agreement now appears to have been concluded, so it would be a good time to have a debate on the current national agreement. We are half way through the agreement that was negotiated 18 months ago. It focused on many issues, including control of inflation. Despite the fact that people said it could not be controlled at that point, the social partnership has addressed that matter and other issues, such as current employment and job creation. We should examine the record of the past two years arising from the last national agreement.

I also wish to bring to the attention of sceptical Members of the House the fact that I could not find any trade unionists on the list of tax defaulters that was published in yesterday's newspapers. It is a credit to the trade union movement.