Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

This is one of five guillotines that is proposed for this week. We find this unacceptable. This Bill deals with the guarantee scheme for individual depositors, but the Minister published a supplementary miscellaneous provisions Bill on Friday evening. From the Dáil schedule, I understand this Bill will come before the House and be guillotined next week. It provides for the bank guarantee to be extended indefinitely by ministerial order from September 2010. This is a very odd way to do business. We have vital business on banking that is being split into two Bills over two weeks and which will both be guillotined. The deposit guarantee scheme is clear enough, because it was discussed before. However, the twin Bill on extending the bank guarantee by ministerial order is not. It is disgraceful to break up these two Bills, and then subject both of them to guillotines.

We have five guillotines on Bills this week. That is simply not acceptable for the scrutiny of this type of legislation. The bank guarantee is the biggest financial undertaking this country has ever undertaken and it is not good enough to subject it to guillotines.

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