Donie Cassidy (Fianna Fail)

Millions of Irish Americans voted yesterday and it is probable that the majority of them voted for Senator Obama.

Mr. Tim Kaine, the Governor of Virginia, visited this House seven weeks ago and addressed the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment, of which I was chairman in the last Dáil. His grandmother comes from Killashee in County Longford. I have become very good friends with the Governor and corresponded with him since his visit. I discovered that he came to Ireland with a high-powered delegation to determine how Ireland turned its economy around in the past 15 years or so. In the course of conversation before he returned to Virginia, he told me that the Virginian authorities reviewed, on three occasions, their financial position for the first five months of the year because the global economy was changing so rapidly. Senator Coffey referred to the decline in industry and manufacturing here. In Virginia, the number one income earner years ago was tobacco, but the state has had to turn around its economy since the decline of that industry. All countries are looking for the winning formula and Ireland is up there with the best of them in terms of how that can happen.