Shane Ross (Independent)

I pay tribute to a great member of Fianna Fáil, Donogh O'Malley. In 1969 the Government of which he was a member introduced free secondary education, the bedrock of the well-educated population we have today. That decision was one of the most foresighted decisions as demonstrated by the numbers educated over the past 20 years. These people are better educated than many in Europe, they speak English and are ready for the multinationals to come in and give them jobs. But for that education, they would have emigrated.

It is only fair that credit be given to the Government for pursuing this philosophy; it is a philosophy and not left wing ideas. This is liberal economics the Government has pursued, albeit quietly, because it does not like being branded as being ideological in any way. It prefers to sit in the centre and hopes nobody notices when it takes ideological decisions. However, it has been a Government decision to welcome huge corporations to produce the prosperity the country has enjoyed.

We must recognise that one of the reasons the partnership talks are so irrelevant and so much of a pageant and so undermining of this House is that Mr. David Begg who will be there in all his glory on the day they all crown each other will represent probably less than one third of the workforce. The employers' group, IBEC, will be there. Its paymasters include AIB, Bank of Ireland and its main paymaster, CRH, the monopolist. The paymasters also include the cartels and the semi-States which are in the Government's pocket anyway. The partnership agreement will be a kind of public service deal cooked up between the public service and a few business men who run large banks and semi-State companies.

Who is not in that deal? None of the multinationals could give a tinker's fart about it. They would not have anything to do with it. They will not be part of the deal and none of their employees will be represented in it. However, the Government will state that it has agreed a great deal for the future of the country, despite this being utterly irrelevant.