Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I am glad the Minister has given us his view of the general financial crisis because this is the first opportunity we have had to hear him talk about it. We started by praising his decision to introduce the late amendment to include certain products such as reversionary products in the legislation. I repeatedly raised sub-prime lending with him a year ago and he said the same as he is saying now, that there was no need to do anything about it. That can be seen in the record of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service and the Dáil. The Minister did not see a compelling case for dealing with these issues. I pointed out to him that every day people listening to the radio or watching television were being sold expensive financial products in a very hard sell. The people in question can be vulnerable, not least because of the state of the health service. They must borrow to fund private treatment because they cannot wait for the public system to provide a service. The Minister may shake his head.

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