Martin Mansergh (Tipperary South, Fianna Fail)

At least the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service, of which I am a member, spent two and a half hours usefully yesterday questioning the Governor of the Central Bank and the Financial Regulator on the implications of turbulence on the world's markets, a matter with implications for Irish jobs. In contrast, this motion is simply a vehicle for maintaining a relentless Opposition focus on the Taoiseach, so that by talking of nothing else it can claim the Government is being distracted from its tasks.

I have no difficulty affirming confidence in the Mahon tribunal, although I do not subscribe to the doctrine that either courts or tribunals should be above and beyond criticism, either in this House or elsewhere. The Supreme Court has been quite critical of the tribunal. However, the Opposition parties do the tribunal no service by repeatedly attempting to pre-empt its findings, operating on the Alice in Wonderland judicial principle, sentence first, verdict afterwards.

I do not much approve of political trials, but one cannot fail to note that, just as the beef tribunal was turned into a trial, first of Charles Haughey and then Albert Reynolds——

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