Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

We seem to have the worst of both worlds with regard to regulation. While the Government has been looking at all the reports on better regulation, with more and more working groups examining this question, people in business are being tortured with filling forms and trying to respond to one agency or regulatory body after another. The quantity of regulation does not seem to equate with the quality, an example being the regulation of the banks. Where stands regulation of the banks today in circumstances where one financial institution has decided it is going to appoint the same person as chairman and chief executive, and where a new managing director is being appointed at a salary level in access of what the Government says it should be? Is there regulation of the banks, or now that the print is drying on the NAMA legislation, are they again free to go back to doing as they like?

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