John Gilroy (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the publication of a report yesterday entitled, Doing Business. It is a study of different countries which shows that Ireland has moved from No. 14 to tenth place as a country where it is easier to do business as defined under a series of indices. This is welcome and it highlights the structural reforms implemented by the Government. Senator Barrett has touched on a point I wished to make. We could consider many of the issues he has suggested in any examination of structural reform in this country. I refer to our level of regulation and the apparent shoddy standards we are happy to stand over and to which Senator Whelan referred in his contribution. I acknowledge that the Leader has addressed in many ways our concerns expressed yesterday about bankers' pensions and the pensions of other top earners. However, with respect, the Leader may have missed my point. I may not have made it clearly and I apologise to him if that is the case. The perception that is allowed to arise by the Government not tackling this issue leads to the risk of people becoming quite alienated from the State. This cannot be over-estimated and it demands our attention.

I was astounded at the response from the colleague across the floor to Senator Whelan's excellent suggestion that if people want to send Christmas cards they should pay for them. The idea that 250,000 Christmas cards are sent out from here and paid for by the very people who are receiving them seems to me to absolutely absurd. Perhaps if the reformed wing of Fianna Fáil would like to have a chat with the unreformed wing, we might be able to make some progress.