Jerry Buttimer (Fine Gael)

He should not tell us we do not understand economics. We do understand them and I welcome this debate on the economy. Yesterday, the European Commission's annual report on the economy under the Stability and Growth Pact referred to several macroeconomic and price competitive challenges facing Ireland and noted the noticeable deterioration in the budgetary position. In January the live register revealed a sharp increase in unemployment to approximately 4.8%. Ireland has slipped 17 points on the world competitiveness ranking. What proposals does the Government have to meet these challenges? It does not appear to have any meaningful, concrete solutions to the problems facing us.

Just last weekend, the Minister for Transport, Deputy Noel Dempsey, withdrew his plans to introduce competition on the Dublin bus market. Commuters will be left stranded between the aspiration of the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government to reduce car dependency and car transport and the Minister for Transport's inability to offer an alternative to static traffic on the M50. We have seen no plans and Senator Ross made a contribution on this. We see overflowing Luas and train carriages. People spend almost 20 hours per week travelling to and from work which is an inordinate amount of time and an unhealthy mark of our economy.

We speak about infrastructural development. Rail transport along the western corridor from Navan has long been promised but we have had procrastination and no delivery. My constituency of Cork South-Central has no National Roads Authority project under construction. We will not have an N28 upgrade, a Bandon Road flyover or a Sarsfield Road flyover. In a failure to tackle growing traffic congestion, no new buses will be provided to our gateway city.

For balanced regional development we need development which is sustainable and delivers infrastructure on time. We do not have this. In his remarks, Senator MacSharry blamed outside influences. Perhaps he is correct. What are we doing as a nation when the Government promotes decentralisation but does not provide the infrastructure for it? Undoubtedly we are facing a worsening budgetary climate. What hope do we have of rectifying this?

The Minister for Finance did not have the answers at the meetings of the Committee on Finance and the Public Service this week. We have no record of delivery of infrastructure on time or on budget. We speak about promoting e-technology and communications infrastructure but we have had a dilution of the commitment on broadband as laid out in the programme for Government. Greater access to broadband was to be a plank of Government. However, only 15.4% of people have access to it.

The Fine Gael spokesperson on communications, energy and natural resources, Deputy Simon Coveney, called for the implementation of a ten-point plan. If we are serious about a knowledge economy, the communications infrastructure should be upgraded to higher speed fibre-optic cable. Anyone involved in industry, education and communications will state the importance of this. Priority must be given to the connection of schools and education institutions to next generation networks which have sufficient bandwidth to carry data, images, voice, television and video. It is important we commit to this.

Senator Donohoe spoke about upskilling. Many people are in dire need of upskilling. In my former job as a director of adult education I met people seeking to be retrained, educated and upskilled. The importance of the work of FÁS cannot be understated. Many community education providers who are supposed to be self-financing and therefore left alone are struggling. We need serious examination of how we provide for upskilling and retraining people.

Yesterday and this morning, we discussed the image of the House and the questioning of its relevance. I recommend that the Seanad actively seeks to be included and regularly updated on social partnership, the national pay talks and economic matters such as that which we are discussing this evening. This would mean we could employ ourselves as a legitimate forum for debate in parallel with the social pay talks. I ask the Minister of State to consider this.

I commend the motion to the House. It is important we debate this matter because this is the legitimate forum for it. I thank Senator Twomey for proposing the motion.