Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

No, they are not, we do not get provincial newspapers in Dublin until Friday.

This week last year, the Government voted down a Labour Party Private Members' motion to restore to the Order Paper the Labour Party Private Members' Bill on civil unions. The Government promised it would introduce its own legislation. Some time ago it published the heads of a Bill but we have not heard anything about it since. What is delaying the publication of the Government's civil union legislation? Will the Tánaiste indicate when the Bill will come before the House?

Yesterday, on the Order of Business the Taoiseach confirmed something the Tánaiste stated previously, which is that the Government will introduce legislation to amend the Competition Act. I understood from what the Taoiseach stated yesterday that this legislation will amend the Competition Act to allow the Government to negotiate with the IMO and that it will be done only in respect of negotiations with the IMO.

The Labour Party tabled a Private Members' Bill in the name of Deputy Michael D. Higgins which would have amended the Competition Act to allow for negotiations to take place between the Government and other professional bodies on matters of delivery of public services. Will the Tánaiste clarify whether the legislation amending the Competition Act is confined only to the IMO or whether it will include the matters covered by the Labour Party Bill? When will it be published?

The bank scheme approved last week has a provision which states that any institution covered by the guarantee scheme shall agree to "indemnify the Minister in respect of any payments of covered liabilities made by the Minister following a claim made under the guarantee or any other liabilities incurred by the Minister in that regard". However, the market notice published by the Department of Finance on its website states:

A covered institution is not required to indemnify the Minister in respect of any payments made by the Minister under a guarantee given to any other covered institution which is not a member of its corporate group.

What this means in practice is that the scheme approved by the Dáil states if a bank gets into trouble the other banks will be required to pay but what the Department of Finance has advertised to the banking market is that this does not apply and any bank covered by the scheme will not have to pay. Deputy Rabbitte——

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