Mary White (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister to the House and welcome the opportunity to speak on this topical and important issue. We all appreciate that unfortunately, the issue is topical due to the recent alleged cases of employee rights abuse. I find it unsettling that foreign workers might be exploited and taken advantage of and I condemn all such exploitation and abuse of guests in our country. We should be shouting from the rooftops that our economy would have collapsed and our growth rate would not have been sustained were it not for our economic immigrants. On a positive note, Senator Quinn commented about people emigrating to America. In comparison, from my day to day experience in the business community, I know of immigrants from Lithuania who earn more in a month in Ireland than they would in a year at home. Our economy would collapse without our immigrant workers while we provide an opportunity for people to make money, attain a certain quality of life and send money back to their own countries. Immigrants' remittances are going back to other countries in the same way we had emigrants' remittances from abroad in the 1950s, when many people emigrated. Immigrants come here and get money. They love it here for different reasons. Last week I met a Chinese beautician in Arnott's. I asked her why she liked it in Ireland and she replied she loved the weather. This is fantastic. She loved the weather because in China, she experienced extremes of cold and heat and she now intends to live here. I do not think the penny has yet dropped with the public that our economy would have collapsed without the immigrants who came to Ireland.

It is inevitable that we will also have intermarriage as well. I look forward to it. The Irish who went to the United States married Germans and Italians and people coming here will intermarry. This will be very good for us and will make us even more exotic than we are now. There is no point in my repeating the events relating to Gama as it has already been restated too many times. However, the Minister should know that my attention has been drawn to an area that would be well worth examining——