When I am on holidays, I sometimes ask the newsagent if he can give me a newspaper with good news only. That does not often happen...

We have had two weeks away from the House and I worry there is a danger that we have forgotten how to talk about good news. We face serious challenges from volcanoes, financial attacks and everything else but there is a great deal of good news out there and I would like the Leader to arrange for one session in which the word “but” is not allowed to be used. In other words, one session in which we can send a message that we can do it.

When I played rugby, on one occasion our trainer talked about the attacking and defending teams. I asked what he meant by the attacking team, whether that was when the ball was on the field. He said, “No,” but had to think for a moment. He said the attacking team was the team in possession of the ball, even on its own back line. I suggest that is a message we have to send to the rest of country.

We have a lot of challenges, but we also have a lot of good news. To find out good news about this country one should read last week’s Newsweek magazine and the quotes from people such as Jean-Claude Trichet who referred to Ireland as being a role model. We have 750,000 people more working now than ten years ago.

We have some very good stories, as well as challenges ahead of us. Let us make sure we regard these challenges as something we can overcome, but we will not overcome them if we continually and solely talk about the downswing rather than the upswing.

Let us make sure we talk about the upswing.