Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)

I want to reiterate the anger that I and everybody else in this House feels on behalf of our constituents that some of these people, and we all know who they are, have not been charged or locked up. The sooner that happens, the better. I am much more angry, however, about the suffering of my constituents because when these people are locked up, and I am confident they will be, the anger of the Opposition and Mr. Joe Public may be satiated but the hunger and thirst of the people outside this House will not be satiated.

I am angry on behalf of my constituents who bought at the top of the boom but who are now heavily mortgaged and in desperate need of help and hope. That is the reason I have put a great deal of effort into working on solutions for mortgages as part of the Joint Committee on Social Protection, along with some of the Leas-Cheann Comhairle's party colleagues.

I am angry with the leader of the Labour Party who has the brass neck to come into this Dáil and lecture my party on being part of some kind of golden circle or that there were illicit financial goings-on to make money. His finance spokesperson, Deputy Joan Burton, comes into this House and makes insinuations about connections between developers and land owners and money for schools, connecting Fianna Fáil and suggesting cute deals went on but we all know that was false. We all know that the priority and the anger of Fianna Fáil backbenchers is on behalf of our constituents who we meet on a daily basis. They are suffering and they need hope and the expectation that they can put food on the table when all of these prosecutions are put to bed.

I am also angry about this Dáil. We are fiddling while Rome burns. We have spent half the day in this Dáil-----

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