Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I note that the Leader has once again funked having a debate on education this week. It is clear that the Government is seriously embarrassed by the fact that it is the only area where frontline staff are being removed from service provision. Having a debate on the issue would be the honest thing to do so that we can examine the potential impact and hear the arguments from both sides. I will be proposing a change to the Order of Business tomorrow or on other days this week to facilitate such a debate. I appeal to the Minister for Education and Science to participate in a debate in the House and ask the Leader to invite him to do so.

Having been reared, as many others were, on stories of Irish people being abused, misused and exploited abroad, I was never more ashamed to be an Irish citizen than I was last night while watching the "Prime Time Investigates" programme. It showed how newcomers and immigrants to this country were being treated by Irish industry. I never thought I would see anything as bad as people actually being forced to work for nothing. As a trade union official I often dealt with cases of people being poorly paid or working in poor conditions but that programme showed instances of people being forced to work for months on end, on the mere promise of being paid. They never got paid and were kept in slavish conditions. I ask that the Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment with responsibility for labour affairs, Deputy Billy Kelleher, give his views on the matter, although I am not for one moment blaming him for the situation. It is likely that he would share my views on the matter but he must go on the record on the issue.

The question of the privatisation and capitalisation of the banks is a recurring theme. As I have said every time the issue is brought up, I believe the Government is right not to rush into anything. It was right not to have invested taxpayers' money in the banks. The issue must be discussed seriously. While capitalising the banks may be important it will not guarantee that money will flow to small businesses and others. Capitalising the banks improves the share price. That is all it does. Once the banks get the money in, they use it to improve their own asset base and there is no requirement on them to make more money available for loans. The Government is doing the right thing in not rushing into anything at this stage. Having said that, I would like the Government to explain what it is doing. The Taoiseach or the Minister for Finance should come to the House and say, "This is what the plan is; this is what we are trying to do; here is how we are going to do it; we want everyone to get in behind us; these are our objectives; and this is how we will know when we have won". At the moment, we are just wandering along from one crisis to another. There is no confidence and there will be no improvement in sentiment and no movement in terms of getting a more optimistic view on the economy while we are wondering where the Government is going. It is not enough for the Government to take the right decisions if it is not sharing with us what those decisions are and telling us how we need to get behind them so that we can at least have a national approach. This is something in which the social partners and other groups should be involved. It has been raised on the Government side as well. We need to address these issues rapidly.