Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

The factor running through, this, as with earlier amendments is the question of fairness. It highlights again in a dramatic manner how unfair the terms of the Bill are. I have a great deal of sympathy with the majority of staff in Anglo Irish Bank. I presume it is a fact that they had no hand, act or part in the skulduggery that went on there, which has brought the banking system to its knees and exacerbated an economy already in a downward spiral.

It is amazing what the Minister can choose to include and ignore. Can anybody in the House remind me of an occasion when a Minister brought a Bill before the Dáil and could not outline its scope? I do not ever recall being presented with a Bill where the Minister did not know to whom it applied, but offered to give the House a "rule of thumb". Let us re-read, for example, what Minister of State, Deputy Pat Carey has to say. He said:

The simplest way in this legislation to define a person who is a public service employee, and to distinguish those persons from private sector employees, whose employment is helped by State funding, is to use the approach taken when applying the pension related deduction to link their employment to their current or potential access to a public service pension scheme.

I am not sure what a potential pension scheme is and I am not sure from that definition who is included and who is excluded - the paragraphs that preceded that quotation deal with the number of people employed in the community sector, for example, who are part-funded by the State. Whether they are included remains a mystery. Then he goes on to summarise:

In order to pin this issue down, the Minister for Finance published amendments last night to the draft Bill, which will clearly define who is affected by the pay reduction, by linking it to their access to a public service pension scheme. The rule of thumb, therefore, will be: if you are affected by the pension levy, the reduction to the rates of pay will also apply.

I apologise to the Minister of State for having had to leave the House for a few minutes to attend to another commitment. However, does that not appear to answer the question I asked the Minister of State as regards who is covered by this legislation? That would seem to indicate everybody who took the hit on the pension levy is covered by the terms of this second bite, but only those people.

I do not believe it is good enough for the Minister of State to hope to get through this debate without telling the House who is included and who is not. Here we have an amendment that would encompass some of the high fliers now being paid by the State, and who brought this country to the edge of ruin, and they are excluded. However, people in humble public service positions are included and the Minister of State cannot put us in a position to reply to the e-mails we are getting from an array of organisations that want to know whether they are included. We are now diverting these e-mails to the Minister of State's Department and apparently, the Department cannot answer them. Will the Minister work it out over Christmas or is this a matter of making it up as he goes along?

It is simply not acceptable for the Minister of State as a rational person to tell the House, in effect, "Here's a rule of thumb, and sure after that, we'll make it up as we go along". Who is included and who is not? Deputy O'Donnell raises a wider question, which is such an appalling vista that I do not want to look at it before Christmas, namely, how to get this albatross from around our necks. How can we wind down in an orderly manner or otherwise this institution that has done such damage? We included the subordinated debt holders and did not even negotiate with them as regards their taking part of the hit, and we are now stuck with Anglo Irish, like the albatross around the neck of the ancient mariner. This economy is sinking under its weight and that still has to come at us in terms of its full impact. I do not know who will be around to pick up the pieces, but in the interim the Minister of State should at least be able to tell us who is covered by this Bill and who is not.

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