Eoghan Harris (Independent)

Will the Leader arrange a debate in the near future on the entrepreneurial culture that was the subject of Dr. Whitaker's remarks this morning and on the need to stop what the latter referred to as the "miserabilism" within the Department of Finance? Dr. Whitaker also spoke about the Department's fiscal obsessions and the "inverted Micawberism" it displays by "waiting for something to turn down". Is it not time we engaged in a debate on entrepreneurial culture? During such a debate we could focus on the point Padraig White, the distinguished former boss of what was then the IDA, made to me at lunch earlier today to the effect that every time 1,000 people go on to the dole it costs the State €20 million and would it not, therefore, be cheaper to spend €15 million on creating employment through the provision of employer subsidies, worker subsidies or whatever. Is it not time we had our third programme for economic expansion, a plan from the Government and a degree of toughness from the Taoiseach in talking to a delinquent class, even if the members of that class are judges?