Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I will repeat a question that has been asked of the Minister previously. In advance of next week's debate, can he provide Members with an analysis of exactly what he means? Members have held arcane debates in the House about exactly what is covered by the guarantee. While I do not wish to reopen the issue of bondholders, the Minister is aware there are many ways of defining bondholders, classes of bondholders and maturity dates. It is almost impossible for Opposition Members to enter the House and play blind man's buff in this regard. They do not know what exactly is covered, its make-up, the running order or the maturity dates.

The Minister spoke earlier of oversight by the Oireachtas. However, unless Members are provided with analysis in some detail of what exactly is proposed in what one might call next week's parallel suite of measures, because all these matters arise out of the bank guarantee, it will be very difficult to make sense of it. The Minister referred to five-year maturity. Does that mean, for instance, that the bonds in Irish Nationwide will come within the terms of the five year period? If so, how many of them and for how much? Similarly, does it mean that what might be described as different types of bonds debt within Anglo Irish Bank will be included? If so, for how much, what type are involved and for what period?

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