Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

I welcome the amendment. The Minister of State who attended much of the debate yesterday will be in no doubt as to what the Dáil expects in terms of the scheme and the appliance of new rules to the behaviour of financial institutions as a result of the taxpayer taking on this guarantee. Yesterday, we gave the Minister an arsenal of armoury which he can use to police this scheme. The difficulty which many on this side of the House have is that while the armoury is limitless, we do not yet know how it will be applied, in what circumstance or which arms, in particular, will be used. There were many issues raised yesterday about pay, bonuses, dividends and lending practices. We on this side of the House want those regulated to the maximum effectiveness. The Minister argued very strongly yesterday in the House that he did not share the view of this side of the House that embodying specific requirements would give the Dáil greater confidence. He argued instead that if we had specific requirements listed in the Bill, his power would somehow weaken. I find that very hard to accept. After listing the things the Minister will regulate, he has the capacity to do anything necessary to achieve the results.

This side of the House remains disappointed that there will not be more specific detail in the scheme. As far as we know, the scheme will only detail the charges, the revenue and the terms under which people can enter to participate. What will those elements of conditionality cover? We did not get to debate that yesterday. How far will the scheme go in listing the areas of protection and what are the conditions that will apply? Will the scheme list conditions that will apply to the way banks behave after they are inside it? Will we be left waiting to see what the Financial Regulator and the Minister's advisers come up with as time goes by? Clearly, the House would like to see as much detail within the scheme so we could be confident that maximum taxpayer protection is provided in it.

From what the Minister has said, I know that not everything we want and not everything that he has conceded during the debate will be in the scheme. However, it is very important that as much as possible goes into the scheme for Dáil approval, and that we are not asked to take too much on trust in respect of how the Minister and the regulatory authorities will apply the vast range of powers we have given to them in the Bill.

Will the scheme provide any additional details on the extension of the guarantee to institutions not covered? The Minister has indicated he will accept applications from other financial institutions and look at them sympathetically. We welcome that in principle. There are clearly different sets of protections necessary for the taxpayer in circumstances where an institution is not wholly regulated in this country. The assets of those institutions are limitless in one sense, but we do not know which of them will be attributed and assigned to Ireland, and should the guarantee be called upon, we may not know what will be assigned as available to the Irish State to deal with unwinding the guarantee it has given. I presume there will have to be a ring fencing of assets and there will have to be some additional rules that are currently not being applied to banks that are not wholly regulated in Ireland. It would be of benefit to the House if the Minister included details of those issues in the scheme we will be debating next week.

I welcome the concession made by the Minister yesterday. We have moved from the situation where the scheme would be laid before the House and the only possibility for the Oireachtas would be to devote Private Members' time to an attempt to reject the scheme. That was not a satisfactory approach at the outset, and I welcome the Minister's agreement to change that position, which is a product of this first amendment from the Seanad.

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