Brendan Ryan (Labour)

It is unfair to drivers in Dublin. It will make it impossible for drivers with disabilities outside Dublin to come into the city. They will have to pay €100, if these bureaucrats get their way, for the privilege of a separate recognition.

The council has decided that the standard blue permit is being abused. I heard no evidence of this. The person I heard on the radio stated that all an individual needs to do is get his or her GP to confirm the matter. What does one expect somebody with a disability to do? The council was going to look for independent medical evaluation of people.

This approach flies in the face of everything this House, the other House and the political system have learned about people with disabilities. I do not know why Dublin City Council did this. If it was exclusively affecting Dublin, I would leave it to Dublin. However, it is an issue that will impinge particularly on drivers with disabilities from outside Dublin. It needs to be stopped now. It needs Government action to make clear that identifying which drivers have a disability is a matter for primary legislation, not for some daft by-law introduced by Dublin City Council.

I ask for a debate on the report of the National Competitiveness Council because what people missed in it was the fact that there were two dissenters, both of whom were trade union representatives. The fundamental dissent was that what was meant to be objective advice to the Government was, in my view, a collection of the ideologies of the individuals.

The real question is how other small countries in Europe are so much more successful, in terms of competitiveness, than Ireland. There are six small countries within the European Union which are reckoned to be more competitive, with Finland being the most competitive in the world. A real national competitiveness council would be telling us why Finland is better than us, not producing daft, politically unsustainable proposals about property taxes, etc. That is what we want to know. If the National Competitiveness Council cannot do better than that report, then the Government should consider getting rid of it completely because it serves no purpose and is probably very expensive.