Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

I pay tribute to the emergency services, including mountain rescue teams and lifeboats, which operate mostly on a voluntary basis. They work at some considerable risk to their own safety, often endangering their own lives in order to rescue people in difficulty.

I would welcome a debate on Turkish accession to the European Union. I find it hard to understand that in the vigorously secular French Republic, prominent politicians — although, to be fair, not the President — are against Turkey becoming an EU member state on the grounds that it does not share our Christian values. It is even more incomprehensible and appalling that the German Christian Democrat Party has declared its total opposition to Turkish accession. One would think that, with all the work Turkish guest workers have done in building up the country over the past 50 years, Germany, above all states, would be more sympathetically disposed to Turkish EU membership.

Our own system of managing immigrant labour from outside the EU does not do us much credit. We need to debate the matter. We should refine the system so that we do not have a form of indenture or quasi-slavery.