Feargal Quinn (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State although I am not sure I entirely welcome all his words. I am pleased this debate is taking place because it is an important issue. I have had a very interesting few months. One of the opportunities I had was to visit a country called Panama, of which I had never heard, other than in the context of the canal, until I went there last month. The reason I was invited, as was the former Prime Minister of Estonia, a country I also had a chance to visit recently, and the former Minister for Finance of New Zealand, was that those in Panama admired and wanted to learn from countries of a similar size which had done well in the past ten years.

I was very impressed at what I learned and at the enthusiasm and ambition of the Panamanians and what they intend to achieve. To take one example which illustrates the competitiveness of the marketplace in which Ireland is competing, the Panamanians, who wish to deregulate as much as possible, decided to aim to be one of the best countries in which to set up new businesses. They looked around the world and saw that Ireland was quite good at this with a period of nine or ten days required to set up a business. Our Companies Registration Office has done a very good job in this area. However, the best country in the world in this respect is Singapore, where it is intended to reduce the time it takes to open a new business from seven days to three days. Panama, in view of the competition it is up against, introduced a system under which it takes 20 minutes on the Internet to set up a company. This system may not be exactly the same as ours, but I mention it because it gives us some idea of the competitiveness of the marketplace for countries such as Ireland.

We were so with it 15 or 20 years ago that we managed to create the Celtic Tiger. However, today there is a degree of complacency, as referred to by Senator Ross, which can certainly be seen in the Government amendment and in the Minister of State's speech. I welcome this debate because it is high time we replaced complacency with action. The changed economic situation demands an appropriate response. We can no longer get away with blatant mismanagement of the economy for electoral purposes which has been a disgraceful feature of past years.

When I was in Panama one of the questions I was asked was how I saw the future of Ireland. I said that what we had done in the past would not work in the future and that we must re-invent ourselves. I did not get the sense that we were doing so in the Minister of State's words tonight. The future will not be like the past and what we more or less got away with in previous years will no longer suffice as policy for the much tougher conditions we will face in the next few years. On past performance, it is likely the Government will adopt an attitude of denial, especially with regard to its own responsibility for the situation in which we find ourselves today. I could forgive that attitude of denial if, at the same time, the Government recognised the need for radical change in its approach to managing the economy. Unfortunately, if the debate so far is anything to go by, I do not see any sign of it.

In today's conditions, the issue of competitiveness has begun to bite. I and others have been talking about our eroding competitiveness for many years but the reality of what has been happening has been masked by the artificial and unsustainable growth provided by the construction industry bubble in recent years. During those crazy years — we can tell they were crazy by the number of cranes that were around — we forgot about exports. We forgot that ultimately the only real wealth we create is that which we earn abroad. Now that our home-grown bubble has burst and we are forced to rely once again on exports, we are beginning to realise just how uncompetitive we have let this country become. People may have grown tired of hearing this message but they have never needed to hear and pay attention to it as much as they do now. The area of competitiveness, which was mentioned by the Minister of State in the Government amendment, must be much higher on the agenda.

In the new world into which we are moving, we cannot ever again rely to the extent we did in the past on overseas companies to provide the lion's share of our growth. We must still work hard to attract foreign direct investment, as mentioned by the Minister of State, and to make Ireland a hospitable and rewarding place for high value-added activities. However, in the future foreign direct investment will be no more than the icing on the cake. For the cake itself, we must rely increasingly on indigenous, Irish-owned companies. We need a quantum leap in the level of support we provide to these companies. We need to extend our vision with regard to these companies and we must help them also to extend their vision. In terms of State support, the hero of the future will be Enterprise Ireland rather than IDA Ireland, although the latter will continue to do valuable work and must still be supported.

As the motion suggests, we must recognise the crucial importance of education in preparing Ireland for the future. I was interested to hear the figures the Minister of State gave the House, but here again there is complacency that will cost us dearly if we do not rid ourselves of it. As we have greatly increased our investment in education in recent years, we are inclined to regard this as a problem we have addressed and which is now behind us. Nothing could be further from the truth. What we have invested up to now has solely been in a process of catching up. We still have not caught up with the rest of the world, however, let alone invested enough to take a position of leadership in the knowledge society of which the Minister of State spoke and which looms ever nearer each time we discuss this subject.

It was interesting to hear where we are in terms of higher education and that Trinity College is among the top 100 universities while UCD is in the top 200 and others are in the top 300, but we have a long way to go. We go on a lot about the national development plan, but what we must do is to revisit that plan in the light of what we now know and make the required adjustments. In a nutshell, we need to spend less on roads and more on education. Only by shifting the entire thrust of our infrastructural investment away from bricks and mortar and towards the development of brain cells can we do the right thing in terms of the future of our economy, society and country.

The Minister spoke about pay and how it was important to get value for the money we pay staff to deliver such services. He said that over recent years wage increases have exceeded productivity growth with a resulting loss in competitiveness. I do not heard sounds of that being solved. Four and a half years ago, the Government promised to bring in a structure that would ensure State employees did not hold the country to ransom.

I was very concerned about what happened last week at Shannon Airport, which called out to us only six or eight months ago and evoked such sympathy. What does it do? It allows a small number of State employees who earn very large sums of money to close the airport. I understand that these people, who say they do not want to work overtime, get 37 days leave per year and, including pensions, earn something like €140,000 per year. They said they not willing to wait to solve this and that they were going to close down the airport. The airports are closing down. We are in a competitive marketplace and cannot afford to do this. The Government has promised to take action to avoid that. Regardless of whatever it is going to do, it promised it four and a half years ago and we have not solved it yet. We must avoid the complacency I detect in the counter-motion.