Jim Walsh (Fianna Fail)

Anyone who has listened to the Minister on the various occasions he has attended this House to debate the Adoption Bill will be well aware of his absolute commitment and grasp of the issues involved. Those issues need to be resolved.

I support the comments by Senator Leyden on the €6 billion being made available by Irish pension funds for investment in infrastructure. Hopefully, that will yield job creation. That is the kind of thing we want to see happening.

I regret the recent comments on, and the lack of progress among, the social partners. Social partnership held us in good stead in difficult times in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Social partnership - I am excluding nobody from it - contributed to the extent of the challenges we are now facing. We should have sought a package of €1 billion for investment in job retention and creation. I suggest that money could be obtained by suspending for three years the benchmarking process that applies across the public service, which they negotiated and for which they were responsible. That would yield the bones of €6 billion over three years for investment in the economy. I hope that suggestion will be taken up by the social partners.