Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I wish to follow up on what Senator Bradford has said. Such a debate is worthy of consideration. In a way the vote is collapsing for the Democratic Party because President Obama has not been the Messiah people expected him to be based on all his original promises. Everyone needs to learn from that situation.

Will the Leader tell me when the Minister for Education and Skills will come to the House to debate statements on education? I do not believe she has debated the issue in the House. She may have been here to debate a Bill but not this issue.

I do not know whether people have noticed the number of international schools that have closed suddenly leaving students high and dry. Do we care about international foreign students? One would have to wonder whether we do because truly they have made complaints regularly to the Garda about their concerns. I have been told by a very reliable source that the Garda needs to start treating complaints from these students very seriously because they can see a pattern and doubt emerging in a school. These are our students. The message needs to go out internationally that students we take into this country have a right to learner protection within this State. We need to know whether such colleges are regulated and bonded in a secure enough manner to reassure families overseas when they hand their money over to the colleges. Many of these are very vulnerable students. I believe these people have been let down and I ask the Leader to respond to my query.

I support Senator MacSharry's call for the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine to come to the House for a debate. We need to look at the way farmers are being manipulated by factory monopolies in this country in terms of the price of beef.

I have met many of those farmers. Things have not got better despite the moves that seemed to have been made to make them better. I do not believe anything has really happened to protect farmers or give them a boost. In the UK, the same animal will get an additional €1 per kilo. This amounts to a difference of approximately €300 for the same animal, depending on whether it is processed in the UK. That facility is not available to the Irish farmer. There is something fundamentally wrong in this regard.