Paschal Donohoe (Fine Gael)

I support the request made by Senator Buttimer that the Minister for Finance come to the House to discuss the state of social partnership and the national finances, just as Senator Boyle suggested. We must look at what is happening in Greece in its economy and take note of the phenomenal difficulty it faced very quickly. We must realise that not only are we just a couple of steps away from finding ourselves in such a difficulty, we are also a couple of comments away from finding ourselves faced by it. It is very important that the trade union leader does not clarify the comments he made yesterday, but that he retracts them and apologises for making them. He has done huge damage to his colleagues and the objective they are trying to achieve. We must remember it is not €1.3 billion the Government is trying to find in savings but €4 billion. It needs to save €4 billion this year and next year and a similar amount the following year. We do not need clarification of his comments but a retraction in the national interest.

I support colleagues who have called on the Minister for Foreign Affairs to come to the House. We should broaden that debate. Two weeks ago it was announced that Ireland would chair the OSCE, Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. That is a major diplomatic coup for Ireland, but it has not received the comment it should have. We should have a debate on our reputation abroad and its status. It seems there was an assumption that if we voted "Yes" to the Lisbon treaty, we would automatically default to being good Europeans and that our reputation would default to what it was before the first Lisbon treaty referendum. That is not true. We should have a plan to rebuild our reputation abroad. It is happening, but the House could benefit from a discussion on the issue.