Brendan Ryan (Labour)

We would benefit from a reasonably calm debate on what is the matter with much of our indigenous industry and what are its problems. Its "slash and burn" mentality was well articulated by the Dungarvan workers that I heard being interviewed, who spoke about the enormous efforts they had made as well as the suddenness and apparent brutality of the closure announcement. How is it that workers from the same background and country can be among the most productive in the world when they are working for a properly-run multinational, paid roughly the same wages and subject to the same national wage agreements? However, when they work for what is described as indigenous enterprise they become uncompetitive. There is a partnership approach in this country in which workers and trade unionists have an obligation to play their part. However, there are serious questions about the capacity of what is called native enterprise to rise to the challenge of a global economy. It is an issue in which the Government has a central role to play.

The Government must educate employers who have had a very easy time of it over the past ten years with a booming economy, who have suddenly been confronted with the reality of world economics and who are taking the easiest, shortest and most brutal way out of their difficulties. These employers are de-skilling this country because when the cut glass market turns around, the industry will not be able to automatically recruit people because it is skilled work that takes years to master. The abolition of these jobs means that this country will lose the skills associated with them forever. We need to examine the role of indigenous enterprise and whether it is actually seriously enterprising.

A particular horrific crime took place the night before last in my home city of Cork. A young family, including a woman who was six months pregnant, was held hostage. It appears from what has been reported by the Garda that the people arrested in connection with the crime all have one thing in common, apart from being psychopathic thugs. They were all closely connected with the self-styled republican movement. I am tired of seeing senior figures in this movement marching behind paramilitary displays and boasting of the heroism of what they call Oglaigh na h-Éireann. There was nothing heroic about the crime that took place in Cork two nights ago. It was a brutal and squalid criminal act and I would be horrified if my fellow countrymen and women would vote for a political party that regards people like the perpetrators of this crime as anything other than the brutal thugs they are. To subject a woman, who is six months pregnant, and four children to such an ordeal is a disgrace to any concept of republicanism that I ever heard or inherited.