Brendan Ryan (Labour)

We should not see him as a potential rescuer for a State company that was wrongly privatised.

The 2006 report of the National Competitiveness Council was published recently and, as usual, it gained a couple of headlines about wage rates. It contains pages upon pages of other things, however, that should worry anyone concerned about the future. The number of areas where the country's competitiveness has slipped is enormous and I will mention one in particular. The proportion of public services available on-line is among the lowest in the OECD. Our Government preaches its commitment to e-Government but we are going backwards relative to other countries. That is only one example in a country that claims to be——