Cecilia Keaveney (Fianna Fail)

I do not know whether I should declare an interest. I have a brother-in-law, Mr. Kearney, and I do not know if he is related to President-elect Obama and whether Moneygall might have been Donegal and a mistake was made when he entered America. We can try to claim credit. I wish the President-elect well.

From the election and what we have seen on television over recent weeks with people queuing to vote, the Leader should consider having a debate in the near future on how we can engage our population in a manner similar to the Americans. The wall-to-wall coverage of this election across the world, for 18 or 20 months, has been incredible. It has led to many people engaging and voting and perhaps there may be lessons in that for us to learn. The debate I seek would be opportune also for us to be able to highlight the work going on under the auspices of the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission whereby we have appointed outreach officers to go to schools and engage with our youth. It is important that we continue to use the House to encourage people to get involved and interested in what takes place in these Houses and use the information we gathered from the last campaign we all witnessed, which was very successful.

I welcome the meeting that took place in the North this week between the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy Dermot Ahern, and the Northern Ireland Security Minister, Paul Goggins, at which they examined the issue of cross-Border criminal activity, be it money or diesel laundering, illegal alcohol and tobacco sales etc. I welcome the Criminal Assets Bureau's ability to work on a cross-Border basis. I ask that the Minister be invited to the House to discuss that issue because as a Border representative it is very important that we keep up the pressure to minimise criminal activity on the Border and maximise the results that are yielding finance for the states that have been robbed of excise. That activity has been a major impediment to legitimate business development in our counties.