Liam Twomey (Fine Gael)

I call for a debate on the banking crisis because the Government's current socialist solution to a free market problem is causing jitters, not just in Government circles but across the economy. What will happen as a result of the banking crisis will cause untold concerns for everybody and will be a huge burden on every man, woman and child in the country.

I wish to comment on some of the remarks made about university graduates. University graduates nowadays are as good as anything we produced in this country in the past 20 years. There has always been a conflict between arts and science students. When I started university 25 years ago there was a debate about whether we needed to have institutes of technology or universities. The same debate is taking place today but concerns have been raised, in particular by employers. We want young graduates to work; we do not want them to write theses all day. If there are concerns about how we integrate people into the workplace, and we need to change the system, we need to do so and stop writing reports about it.