Paul Bradford (Fine Gael)

On the debate on social partnership, we have to accept that there may well be a role for social partnership but the parameters have changed dramatically and it will now have to be very much secondary to the political decision-making process. My analysis is that social partnership is fine once the political leadership exists and once the dialogue and decision making begins and ends with the politicians. The big difficulty we had in the past decade or so is that cosy deals were being done behind closed doors and the Oireachtas was totally excluded from the important decision making. Many of those decisions have left the country in the perilous state it is now in. The job of politicians is to lead. I have stated previously that in recent months the Government has shown a degree of leadership. Much more leadership is required to save the country. It will not save Fianna Fáil but it is necessary to save our country.

Will the Deputy Leader arrange a full debate on the future funding of agriculture? I seek this in the context of Europe being the best friend of Irish agriculture. However, funding post-2013 will be determined over the next few years and, regardless of potential restraints at EU level, significant funding will be available to the industry. We have an enormously interesting debate ahead of us on this matter because the decisions we will take politically on the spending of those moneys will decide the future fabric of rural Ireland. They will have to be tough because we cannot please everybody but we will have a significant opportunity to shape the future of rural Ireland by the decisions we make on how that money is allocated. Billions of euro will be provided per annum. One system is in place currently which is up for review. I hope it will be reviewed and changed but we need an inclusive public debate on the issue because an entirely new structure will be put in place in 2013 and the Houses of the Oireachtas have a significant opportunity to decide what the future lay of the land will be throughout rural Ireland.