Niall Ó Brolcháin (Green Party)

I welcome the debate that is to take place later today on the banks. We should also have a debate on the issue of how the matter is being reported in the media. I see a difficult situation arising. In the past we had hyper positive reporting of just about everything to do with our economy and anybody who said anything negative was pilloried or heralded as a prophet of doom. Now, however, we seem to have gone to the opposite extreme and anybody who says anything positive about the economy is pilloried as an idiot. We have gone from one extreme to the other, but neither is entirely right. Both good and bad things are happening. People on both sides of the House appreciate that the key issue is that small and medium enterprises need to be able to rebuild the economy. It is not all about the banks, but about the fact that ordinary people need to be able to get back to work so we can build up the economy. The Minister announced yesterday that €3 billion was being set aside for small and medium enterprises, which I consider good news among the significant negative and bad news we heard. We should highlight this, but when I saw it in the newspapers, I found it buried on page 10 and hardly given a mention. We, on both sides of the House, need to keep our eyes on the ball. We need to ensure the economy can recover and should not focus on bad news all the time.

With regard to reporting of what is happening, I mentioned previously that the Romanian Senate debated this issue and unanimously passed a motion that there should be a quota of both good and bad news on such stories.