John Paul Phelan (Fine Gael)

I agree with my party leader, Senator Fitzgerald, with regard to the schedule for this week and the past number of weeks, which has been very thin not just on legislation but also on general debates. In the past few weeks the Leader has agreed on the Order of Business to a number of debates. In particular, I do not see why we have not had a debate on education, which has been raised by a number of speakers this morning. We should certainly have had it by now. There are at least four Ministers of State in the Department of Education and Science and if the senior Minister cannot be here I do not see why one of the others cannot take his place.

Last week a number of people mentioned the need for a debate on agriculture. Again, it is not on the schedule for this week or on the Order Paper for today. I ask the Deputy Leader to consider it as soon as possible. Similarly, a debate on public finances in general has been sought for a couple of months but we have not had one. Let us consider the number of discussions we are having every week. Last week there were three items on the schedule for the two days we sat. That is not appropriate at a time at which there is such outcry on a number of issues.

I wish to join with colleagues who raised the issue of fuel prices in light of an EU survey, the results of which were published yesterday, which showed that in Ireland diesel prices are 20% higher on average than the rest of the EU and petrol prices are 11% higher. I noted the statement of Ann Fitzgerald of the National Consumer Agency that we were not comparing like with like in the sense that the European figures were monthly while the Irish figures were weekly. However, her own figures show that diesel prices are 9% higher than the European average and petrol prices are 1% higher. It would be useful to have a debate on this issue as well as a general discussion on prices, as mentioned by Senator Hannigan. I was interested in the comments of the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources on this subject. His suggestion for dealing with the price differential between Ireland and the rest of Europe was to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Admittedly, this is a perfectly laudable long-term objective, but for people who are sitting in traffic on their way to schools across the country to collect children it is not much of a consolation that the Government's policy is to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.