Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

The Taoiseach makes it sound as if this top-up to the pension fund is for the bank's porters and tellers. It arises directly from the change in the contractual arrangements that were made for the chief executive of the bank.

Under the terms of the credit institutions legislation, did the Government or the Minister for Finance approve this top-up arrangement? Does the Minister for Finance intend to exercise his powers under the credit institutions arrangements whereby it can control these matters?

I also wish to raise the issue whereby 2,000 times the top-up of the chief executive's pension has already been committed to Irish Nationwide Building Society by way of recapitalisation - €2,700 million. This building society is transferring €8.7 billion of its loans to NAMA from a total loan book of €10.5 billion. Yesterday, we were told that the building society incurred losses last year alone of €2.5 billion. It was giving out 120% loans for property speculation here and in Britain. This was a building society and its principal job was to give mortgages to people to buy their houses, but it was involved in lending for property speculation that we must all now pay for.

Whatever might be said about other financial institutions, it was widely known there were problems in Irish Nationwide. It was well known that bad practices were going on there, with the enrichment of some of the top people in Irish Nationwide arising from those practices. That was going on for some time before we heard about Lehman Brothers and the bank guarantee that was given on 29 September.

The Taoiseach was Minister for Finance between 2004 and 2008. During that period did the Financial Regulator, the Registrar of Friendly Societies, the Governor of the Central Bank or anyone in the Department of Finance give him a report or bring to his attention the bad practices that were going on in Irish Nationwide which have now been made public and for which the taxpayer must pay?

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