Sustaining Progress did not deal with the question of school buildings, because the Government of the day had refused to include a reference to them in it, Mr Joe O'Toole, (Ind) emphasised.
The Government had refused to negotiate on that basis because it wanted to deal with school buildings outside of the partnership process.
The actions taken by various groups in pursuit of objectives which were not included in Sustaining Progress were not, therefore, constrained in anyway by the industrial peace commitments in that agreement. "If the Government wanted to restrict the opportunity to take action in respect of school buildings it should have made commitments about school buildings in Sustaining Progress. Such commitments do not exist," he said.
Mr Pascal Mooney (FF) said he had been receiving, on average, over 100 unsolicited e-mails per day on his computer, most of which were deeply offensive and pornographic.
While PC users were constantly being encouraged to avail of an unsubscribe facility, doing so would merely lead to the receipt of even more e-mails, because there was nothing in existence technically to unsubscribe where this unwanted material, known as Spam, was concerned.
Mr Mooney said he welcomed the initiative being taken by the Minister for Communications, Mr Ahern to outlaw Spam within Europe, and he understood that the Minister intended during the Irish EU presidency, to extend the ban to the rest of the world. He hoped the Minister would explain to the House how the proposed new measures would be enforced, because it was the one flaw in his otherwise welcome statement.
Mr Feargal Quinn (Ind) said he also wanted to congratulate the Minister on his initiative.