Ann Ormonde (Fianna Fail)

I, too, wish to congratulate the President-elect, Senator Obama. I listened to his speeches on his vision and its emphasis on change. In a couple of weeks, when the Minister for Foreign Affairs has had time to dwell on that vision, we could perhaps have a discussion about it. We all need to assimilate what he has said up to now. We need to see, for example, how he will deal with the developing world and the people of the world, not the countries of the world. Senator O'Malley referred to that earlier. These are issues on which I wish to see how the President-elect will express his vision for change. I believe it is healthy and will be good.

I love the three words he uses as his slogan, "Yes we can"; they could serve for us as well. We can and will succeed in this country again, and we will get it right. It is not always rosy in the garden, but I hope we will act on those three words. That was my vision for the future, "Yes we can". We should all think like that from now on. It is possible that we will get our economy back. We should work with the President-elect and make it work for all of us, for the benefit of the world and our economy. We can work with America to bring forward this new vision. That would include the undocumented Irish in America. There are many issues we must discuss. There is a golden opportunity for the Minister to come to the House in a couple of weeks to outline all the issues and have a full discussion on them.