David Norris (Independent)

I greatly fear that Senator Alex White might be correct in his perception that this House is becoming increasingly irrelevant. That could explain why, once again, less that one third of the Members are present for the Order of Business, as has been the case over the past two weeks.

I welcome the indictment of the President of Sudan on war crimes charges. His response was to exclude a number of aid organisations, including Médecin San Frontières, which means that many people in the camps will not be immunised against meningitis and will die. His response is to sentence more people to death. I am glad this indictment has been made and I hope a similar warrant will issue for Mr. George Bush and his cronies, another president who deserves this treatment.

I support my colleagues' call for a debate on the economy, be it a rolling debate or otherwise. We hear news all the time on the radio, such as the Government opening the books to the Opposition and the social partners. How about forcing the banks to open their books? We would all like to know what is in them too. I was horrified to hear that nobody in the Department of Finance has an economic qualification. I do not believe everybody must be academic but apparently there are 100 such qualified people in the ministry in the North of Ireland, which is one third the size of this country. I agree that we must examine matters such as child benefit. Again, I rely on the wireless for news because we have not had this debate here. Children must be protected but if, as was stated this morning on the airwaves, there are people in receipt of child benefit who use the benefit to go on skiing holidays, it is an obscenity. We must look at where the money is. It is not just a case of technically fiddling with the income tax rate but of finding out where the money is.

We should have a debate on hedge funds. Mr. Brendan Keenan has said that one of the problems with the economy is that London-based hedge funds are gambling against the Irish economy and deliberately driving it down. They want to do us in so they can collect the pickings. I want to know about that. I was astonished to learn that Mr. Garret FitzGerald, "Saint Garret", recently retired from them. I wonder about the ethics of that.

Finally, let us examine competition. We have made a tin god out of competition but we do not understand the difference between competition and competitiveness. The Competition Authority should be put in the firing line, given its record. The abolition of the groceries order sent prices up, not down as it claimed it would. The licensing of every huckster's shop in Dublin to sell hard booze sent the alcoholism rate up. We are keeping electricity prices high in the name of competition. Selling off eircom was not the decision of the Competition Authority but privatisation was supposed to result in competition. Private investors asset stripped the company, did not invest a penny in broadband and then flogged the company to an Australian pension company.