Paul Bradford (Fine Gael)

I welcome the initial statement of the Leader on his plans for "in-house" reform. I fully support the idea of European commissioners and MEPs addressing the House, as was the case a number of years ago. The Leader should take the obvious step of ensuring that each Minister will come before the House at least once every five or six weeks, as they do before the other House, to account for their stewardship of their Departments and to take questions, queries and suggestions from Members of this House. I expect the Government to respond favourably to such a request. I made it a number of times when on the other side of the House but I will not change my view of politics simply because of musical chairs. Each Minister should come before the House and this should start in the near future.

In this context, the first Minister who should appear before Members at the earliest possible date is the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Innovation, Deputy Bruton. While the meeting should be on a wide variety of issues, Members must take note that today's unemployment figure of almost 450,000 people demonstrates clearly the scale of the problem facing the Government and this House. Job creation also must be at the core of this House's agenda and many of its Members have ideas they would like to present to the Minister, Deputy Bruton. He has the ability and range of thought to respond favourably to them.

Action is what is needed from Ministers, not the so-called consensus that obtained over the past ten or 15 years in which everyone was permanently in meetings talking about solutions but not doing anything. I look forward to action by the Minister, Deputy Bruton. He should appear before this House within the next week or two to discuss his plans to put Ireland back to work. Every problem is secondary to this. Problems cannot be solved in the areas of health, education and social welfare unless people are put back to work. Will the Leader facilitate an urgent debate on unemployment and job creation, with the Minister, Deputy Bruton, at the earliest date possible?