Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

It required no accountability from the current board. There are good people in Fianna Fáil and connected with it. What is wrong with them coming before an Oireachtas committee to be examined on their qualifications for this very important position? Are we to learn nothing from the disaster so that the Minister can tell his cronies - the developers and the big bankers - that it is business as usual?

The Minister had an opportunity in this Bill to mark out new territory and to indicate to everybody in this House that times have changed and we have learned something. There is currently an attempt by the Minister and the Taoiseach to paint a picture that the only thing to go wrong in Ireland was the failure of the regulator. The contention is there was nothing wrong anywhere else. We have heard several times from the Taoiseach about comprehensive regulatory failure; this was not just a failure of regulation, however, it was crony capitalism, as the Minister termed it in an interview with the Financial Times.

What does the Minister want from the legislation? There is reference to extra information and powers to request information at Dáil committee meetings but they are very small beer and it will happen a long time after current events. There is a peer group review which will happen only every four years. What use is a peer group review in that respect? I used to work in this area. A peer group review four years after the event, which will take six months and be reported on six months later, would amount to financial archaeology. It would be of very little benefit.

There will be no inquiry by the Dáil or a committee of the Houses into what happened. Fianna Fáil is in a protective cover-up mode. This legislation is not good enough for Irish taxpayers.

See this speech in context