David Cullinane (Sinn Fein)

It is very relevant.

The Minister of State made the point that those of us who oppose the Bill, including section 2, and the treaty are not living in the real world, as we ought to. Those of us who do not believe the current policies are working are told this continuously. The Minister of State was in opposition when a former Taoiseach said people who did not agree with his analysis of the Celtic tiger were negative, did not live in the real world and should commit suicide. The Celtic tiger involved light-touch regulation of the banks and an undermining of our public finances such that they were built on sand, and there was a property bubble that we could see was going to burst. We have been proven right about our commentary at the time. Comments such as those made by the then Taoiseach are always made about people simply because they do not agree with the proposition put forward by the Government, yet we live in a real world that is very different from the bubble in Leinster House. It is a world in which 440,000 people are out of work and where businesses are closing every day of the week. If one walks down the high street in Waterford, my area, one will see shops closed with "For sale" and "To let" signs. This is the case in every town, city, rural area and village. Most of our banks are defunct and some no longer exist. Some are in State ownership for the wrong reasons, and this is coupled with the crisis in Europe. This is the real world in which we live.

I made the point yesterday, perhaps flippantly because it was raised by somebody else, that the empire has no clothes in that the European-----