Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

On behalf of the Labour Party, I join with Deputy Kenny in opposing this Order of Business. This is a business as usual and a politics as usual Order of Business. We cannot have business as usual and politics as usual while we have a crisis in banking and in our economy.

I welcome yesterday's decision by the chief executive of Bank of Ireland to forego his pension top-up but we have yet to hear what is happening to the €1 million bonus Mr. Fingleton took and which was supposed to be paid back. There is no sign of that and we have not heard anything from Government to date that it will require him to pay it back. Meanwhile, the Government intends to put thousands of millions of taxpayers' money into banks which engaged in bad lending practices that caused the crisis in banking and in the economy and which is resulting in people losing their jobs and their businesses going to the wall.

The Labour Party will not agree to this kind of routine business as usual and the notion that the Easter recess is over so let us get on with some humdrum parliamentary business and forget the crisis people outside this House are experiencing in their daily lives and in their business. As long as Fianna Fáil continues to mismanage this economy, the Labour Party will not agree to business as usual in this House and will oppose the Order of Business.

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