Paul Bradford (Fine Gael)

My colleague, Senator Healy Eames, was rapporteur for the Joint Committee on Education and Science in the recent production of the substantial report on the problem of early school leaving. Will the Leader provide for a debate on this report in the House, if possible? It certainly needs to be ventilated. The report and the work done by Senator Healy Eames shows the value of the Oireachtas committees and it needs to be aired and debated.

The Leader might attempt to arrange to have the Minister for Social Protection, as he is now called, come to the House to discuss social welfare policy. It is two or three weeks since we debated the possibility of cuts to old age pensions. It appears a kite was flown by the Minister. Now the agenda has moved on to lone parents. These are matters for budgetary and Government policy, but we could have a substantive debate on social welfare, which would be useful.

The annual bill for social welfare is considerable. The figure of 10% is often quoted as being the possible amount of fraud in the social welfare system. If this problem could be tackled and the money accessed, many genuine persons on social welfare could have their lot improved and we could help deal with the budgetary difficulties. In advance of the budget and final Government decisions being made, we could have a useful, and constructive debate on social welfare policy. There are a plethora of schemes. Those of us who involve ourselves in constituency work almost need a computer to follow them. There is major scope for rationalisation of the schemes and for administrative tidying up. We need to have a debate with the Minister. Everyone could gain from this. We could put to bed some of these scare stories about old age pensions and lone parent's allowance being cut and we could also attempt to tackle what clearly is a serious fraud problem in the Department where taxpayers' money is going amiss.