David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I agree with my colleague, Senator Bacik, that this is red letter day because Ms Jody Blake is back with us here. Our family is complete once more. I also extend my sympathy and good wishes to Senator Harte and his family following his most unfortunate and sad accident. Reading between the lines, he seems to be making some marginal improvement and I hope that continues.

As I have been a frequent critic of China because of its human rights record, it is only appropriate that I place on record my strong welcome for the fact that in recent statements it has been showing remarkable change in this area, in particular the commitment to disestablish forced labour and re-education camps. If it lives up to this promise it will be a very important step. We should keep up our pressure. We have a motion on the Order Paper about organ harvesting which still goes on but is winding down, in part because of pressure from countries such as ours. The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade passed the motion unanimously and I hope we might do the same here.

There is a growing number of climatic catastrophes occurring all over the world. Several of us, including my colleague, Senator Bacik, who produced a Bill in this House some years ago about climate change, have been concerned about the damage that is being done and the inevitable progress of that damage. There have been climate change sceptics. I do not know how anyone can remain sceptical in light of the extraordinary phenomena of freak weather conditions in places as far apart as the United States of America and the Philippines where a great tragedy has engulfed those lovely warm people, many of whom work here in the nursing profession - we know how caring they are and how much their families mean to them. Now in the past day or two a cyclone has struck the heart of Europe, in Sardinia. It is not possible to deny this any more.

I look forward to a debate on the exit from the bailout. I do not think we have exited from anything. We are still deep in the manure. We would not have had the slightest additional degree of movement whether we had exited in this way or not. This is a lovely sunny day - I am taking this line from somebody I heard on the radio because it is a very good analogy - but one would be a bloody fool to say one would not get an umbrella because it is sunny today. One does not know what will happen tomorrow. It might well rain. Conditions change all the time. The economic situation is very volatile. The projected results for this economy from the OECD are very disappointing. They show some small growth. I do not mean to be hypercritical of the Government. I am sounding a bit of a warning. The United States of America is bound to have another crash. I have not the slightest doubt that there will be another really severe wallop there because quantitative easing continues at a rate of $85 billion per month. That is not going into productive industry. It is going straight into the stock market. It is going from a housing bubble into a stock market bubble and when that collapses, the whole house of cards will be up in the air.

We must fight for fairness. The Germans must be told we played a significant role in rescuing their financial system. It is not just Germany plus the rest, and we are all the little peons working at their dictates. It is the whole of Europe and what is good for Europe. I predicted quite a number of years ago that either we would end up with a full fiscal union, which is the direction in which we are going, or the whole thing would blow apart. We need to take this situation very seriously. I look forward to the debate.