Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

The point is about proportionality with other offences on the Statute Book. Last week, the House held a harrowing debate on the Residential Institutions Redress Act and whoever drafted that Act provided extraordinarily severe penalties for breaches of confidentiality in respect of people's own personal circumstances and the awards they received. This legislation goes to the heart of Ireland's financial security by preventing, in so far as possible, runs on banks. It exhibits a very soft attitude to people of the banking fraternity who abuse public trust on foot of their extraordinary power.

One fact that drives people mad at present is that the people who did this to Ireland earned enormous sums of money. One man was heard to complain that he earned less than €2 million a year. Others were obliged to get by on €4 million or €5 million, very large pensions and so on. They feel hard done by because their financial genius has not been sufficiently rewarded by the ordinary PAYE-paying citizen of this State. If the Attorney General's office contains a wall chart showing offences under different schedules, there is an argument for a degree of proportionality. As the Minister is aware, it has proven extraordinarily difficult in Ireland either to institute prosecutions for white collar, bank or corporate crime or to secure convictions. My point is that this is extraordinary when one considers other schedules. The Minister is a barrister and I am sure he could reel off many laws whereby someone who stole a loaf of bread, as opposed to a bank, would face tougher penalties than are provided for in this legislation.

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