Feargal Quinn (Independent)

It is an honour to follow those words of Senator McAleese. I will not touch on the words except what he said about "fresh thinking". I would love to instill the idea that this House can create fresh thinking. This is approximately the 70th anniversary of Dunkirk in Britain. Let us remember what happened in Dunkirk. The people of Britain were on their last legs and suddenly a degree of confidence and enthusiasm and belief in themselves came about. We are in a similar situation, a situation where we are facing a threat as big as Dunkirk was to Britain, but we can do something about it. This House can set an example. The one thing I do not want is that we call on the Government to do everything. We can set an example of doing it ourselves. This came into my mind yesterday when speaking about that island in Japan where there were threats to the airport. They got together and decided to do something about it themselves without looking for the Government to subsidise it. We, the citizens, can do something about it. Instead of calling on the Government to do it, we could initiate a truly enthusiastic vigorous effort to support our local industries, shops and producers. I know this is the Order of Business and the Leader may be wondering what we can do here. I would like time to be allocated to debate active citizenship. Last year President McAleese talked about active citizenship, which is about the citizens saying that we can do it rather than asking someone else to do it. I have been through a number of towns in the past year and have found that some towns are spotless and some towns are very untidy. I hear people complaining that the council does not clean the streets often enough. One will find other towns where the shopkeepers and people who live there get out and clean the streets themselves. They do not litter them or if they do, they get out and clean themselves. When one person does it, then his or her neighbour does it also and it acts like a catalyst - that enthusiasm and belief in ourselves that we can do that sort of thing.

One thing we can do is to buy Irish. The Government is no longer allowed to support a buy Irish campaign because we cannot use State money to do it, but individually we can do it. In my experience in the supermarket business, we ran a buy local campaign and the local people discovered that they did not know certain items were made in their area or that a local factory employed so many people. I call on the Leader to ask the Taoiseach to come to the House to give us the chance to have that debate. I am not looking for any help or money. I am not looking for anything other than his ears in order that he could spearhead and drive that active citizenship to encourage us to do something ourselves. I believe this is the House that can do it. We can earn our keep and earn the respect of the country if we lead this. With enthusiasm, vigour and energy we can overcome the difficulties we are facing now, not by calling on someone else to do it but by doing it ourselves.