Martin Mansergh (Tipperary South, Fianna Fail)

We should try to focus on the main debate. I have replied to the Senator.

Senator Butler referred correctly to the 20% to 25% cuts made and the many job losses in the private sector. If one were to average out the job losses and the cuts, one would be talking about an even greater figure than the one with which he was dealing.

Senator Harris is an old sparring partner of mine, both of us in different ways being ideologists, but he probably engages in a good deal more ideological warfare than I do. At times he can verge a little on the apocalyptic; at the same time, however, he had the House gripped by what he had to say.

The whole point and purpose of social partnership when introduced in 1987 was to avoid the destructive confrontations that had taken place between Arthur Scargill and the Thatcher Government and which, incidentally, had led to the complete ruin of the British coal industry and its proud traditions. However, I still hope and I am cautiously optimistic, although I accept Senator Harris has vast knowledge, probably more than anyone in this House and most people outside, of the inner workings of and the cross-currents in trade union circles. One gets a taste of this in magazines such as Tribune. From time to time I read left-wing literature and one can see posters on lamp posts around the city at regular intervals for public meetings at which the usual list of suspects speak about smashing this, that and the other.