Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I add my voice to Senator Brian Hayes's call for a debate on this issue and I agree with much of what he has said. We must be careful that we achieve our targets on education. The House will note that the class size of primary schools has deteriorated this year and on that basis we will not meet targets. Senator Brian Hayes will articulate that view and Senator Ulick Burke has mentioned it many times. It is crucially important that we debate it. I will not deal only with the central issues. Why is it relevant? Brussels and Strasbourg were crippled recently on the issue of pensions. Social partnership got a commitment from Government last night that a Green Paper and a White Paper on pensions would issue over the next year. This shows that we are trying to anticipate the difficulty. Paris and all of France closed down six months ago because of labour legislation and problems relating to immigration. Last weekend the talks were delayed due to the need to deal with labour law and the protection of labour rights to ensure that what happened in France does not happen here. It is not by accident that we have the best industrial record in Europe over the past ten years, it is because people locked themselves away for the past six months to try to deal with the issues they anticipated would cause problems along the way. Social housing was also an issue.

A commitment has been made on the minimum wage which brings us up to date with the rest of Europe, a protection of immigrants is part of that and, for the first time in western Europe, social welfare payments will be connected to the average industrial wage, as opposed to the consumer price index and the inflation index. These are some of the reasons this issue affects everyone. It is important that people know what the issues are and how we are trying to anticipate problems that are crippling other European countries. It is crucial that we debate this topic and draw conclusions. We should also congratulate people on all sides who have tried to bring these social partnership talks to a conclusion and wish the farmers well who have not finished their talks and who hope to conclude discussions tomorrow. They are probably under greater pressure than any other group at the moment.