Seanad Report:Martin Mansergh (FF) accused Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte of pandering to people's fears by raising the topic of work permits for immigrants seeking employment here.
If any reasonably senior person in Fianna Fáil had put forward this issue they would have been accused, in no uncertain terms, of engaging in a political race to the bottom, he believed.
Dr Mansergh, who said he fully supported the notion of properly enforced and adequate labour standards, noted that Mr Rabbitte's comments had been praised in some quarters as a shrewd political move.
"I am just a little disappointed that the usual cheerleaders for the left, and particularly the Labour Party, are using that sort of terminology, and they are not looking at it in the sort of moralistic ways that they would undoubtedly have done if the proposal had come from Fianna Fáil.
The leaders of the Opposition parties wished to persuade the Irish people that they were exercising leadership. "Well, I have to say I don't consider deputy Pat Rabbitte's intervention on this subject a very edifying example of leadership."
Dr Mansergh said that as someone who had been involved with the Labour Party in the creation of a government in 1993-1994 he would not be very attracted to doing business with that party if that was its politics. And as someone who had defended the trade union movement, he was somewhat disappointed that it had gone along so readily with this idea.
Almost €1 million a week is being spent to assist non-English speaking pupils in primary and secondary schools, Education Minister Mary Hanafin told the House.
She was responding to a call by Brian Hayes (FG) to address the "inadequate and unfair allocation" of language support teachers to assist with the increasing number of students from other countries who needed extra help in learning English.
Ms Hanafin said that in the current school year her department had provided 541 language support teachers at primary level and 261 whole-time equivalent teachers at second level to support such pupils. This represented an investment of more than €46 million.
"The Government is conscious that some schools have a large proportion of non-English speaking students and is endeavouring to ensure that they get the extra resources they need," said the Minister.