Donie Cassidy (Fianna Fail)

This is statistical information that has been supplied to us all and we must accept it in good faith.

Senator Regan raised local government charges and the Bill will go ahead as outlined. Senators Coffey, Buttimer and Healy Eames raised the unemployment figures. As we often stated in the House the biggest challenge facing the country is jobs, and competitiveness is the root of the evil. If we look at the graphs for the past 20 years, the one failure, if we had a failure, was the high cost of labour.