Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the holding by the Royal Irish Academy of a symposium on bicameralism today. I hope the House will be able to debate the papers and proceedings from this meeting when they are published. Senators Paul Coghlan and I have been to the wicket already. Senator Maurice Manning is acting as an umpire and Senator Zappone will speak later at this highly commendable endeavour.

I am concerned about the operations of the single euro payments area, SEPA. David Murphy has reported on RTE that the Government is expected to collect €700 million less tax in January than originally anticipated as a result of the introduction of the new SEPA system, although we may make up the shortfall in February. Mr. Murphy stated that transactions which used to take two or three days in banks now take seven days, with processing times expected to fall eventually to between three and four days. It is strange that we joined a system in which transactions take twice as long to process as was previously the case. I ask for a debate on why on earth we joined SEPA.