Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

There is no point in the Taoiseach looking across at me with his "Brian Dobson" eyes and saying "Sure, nobody could have known". If nobody could have known, why did he cap the amount at £100 million? He is dealing with taxpayers' money. There is no point in taking out the handkerchief again and talking about how — it is true — so many thousands of lives were disgracefully ruined. It is true that everybody in this House believes that they ought to be compensated, but that is not the issue. The issue is that the Taoiseach was in charge of taxpayers' money and he set up an arrangement whereby a man who was leaving office the next day did not comply with required Cabinet procedures, did not submit a memorandum, excluded the Attorney General's office from the advices that were given in advance and did not make the agreement available to Ministers. The Taoiseach entered into a secret deal. As the number of applicants climbs by thousands, the Taoiseach now says "Sure, how could I have known?" How can the Taoiseach know the length of the port tunnel to Dublin Airport? At that rate of going he would probably end up at the prison site in Thornton Hall.

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