Ann Ormonde (Fianna Fail)

I will be very brief. I welcome the Minister of State and I especially welcome the points he made when he spoke from the heart at the end of his speech. These are the points about which I wish to speak and which I want to endorse. The Minister of State said we are here to reform the banking system and to create an environment for job creation. I welcome and endorse the points made on how we are to go about this. The Minister of State mentioned maintaining the 12.5% corporation tax and the importance of metro north and its potential to create 35,000 jobs. I thought the water metering system was a very interesting idea and we should accept the offer from Siemens which stated it would install meters without any cost to the State. This is something we should discuss again.

Let us stop points scoring. I stated this on the Order of Business earlier. We have a golden opportunity to speak about the future of Ireland and keep our heads high. There is talk about our sovereignty and independence being diluted and our neutrality gone. I see nothing wrong with asking for money if we need it. There is nothing wrong with this and I keep my head high. Let us put hope back into our system. Let us give confidence to the people. Let us try to educate the broader public about what we are doing to correct measures and not talk to ourselves and score points.

I echo everything the Minister of State said in his speech. I endorse the points he made on national recovery, development skills and preparing young students coming out of schools and colleges for work experience programmes. These are the areas where I want to see co-ordination between the Departments of Education and Skills, Enterprise, Trade and Employment, and Social Protection. These Departments have not worked well together so I hope from here on in there will be better co-ordination between them because this is where the jobs are and this is how we will make the transition from school or work experience to work.