Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

——in Ireland, that these people live on a level where if a company goes out of business, it shows how evil capitalism is and if a company is successful, it is another indication of how evil capitalism is. They live in a different world where the social order, underpinnings and economic substructure of society are a matter on which either they express naive, ideological views when they are in China, Cuba or wherever, or else simply state that they are above all of that, it does not matter whether companies are profitable, they do not care about those issues which do not concern them, they are more elevated and abstracted intellectually and morally and they live on a higher plain than most of their fellow men. I hope it is not Thomas Gradgrind reincarnated to state that such is an effete view of the world and that nobody who believes in liberal politics should eschew liberal economics.