Tony Killeen (Clare, Fianna Fail)

They are extraordinary achievements. Like Senator Mansergh, I look at the 20 year period, from the mid-1980s to now, rather than the shorter one fashionable in some circles. This period illustrates the country's great economic capacity to improve and to achieve levels of employment which we would have thought impossible at that stage.

The high rates of unemployment in the 1980s and early 1990s were artificially low because many young people emigrated at that time. Had they been here the level of unemployment would have been far higher than it was. Unfortunately, because those people emigrated and made new lives in the countries to which they went, their potential contribution to this economy and society is lost.

One of the great advantages of the present situation is that we retain a high proportion of young people. With the exception of a few disadvantaged areas we are persuading them to stay longer in education than their parents did, and that educational attainment will benefit them in future. I am confident that those who will lead our society in a decade or so will move us on to the next plain. When we did not have them there was a significant deficit in our society.

Great credit is due to the leaders of the mid to late 1980s — Charles Haughey and Ray Mac Sharry made difficult choices in Government, and Alan Dukes in Opposition adopted a strategy which did not ultimately serve him well as an individual politician but served the country well.