Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

The same case can possibly be made for the pensions Bill which was dealt with the previous week.

I note there will be a guillotine tonight. However, the manner in which this legislation has been brought forward is not fair to the Members of the House. Deputy Howlin is a Minister and a former Leas-Cheann Comhairle and as such he will understand my point better than most and he will sympathise with the Opposition viewpoint. I note that a raft of amendments were tabled last week, including the two amendments being dealt with in this motion. At the last count, there are 130 amendments, at least 120 of which are in the name of the Minister and they cover 32 pages. The original Bill, as initiated, is only 24 pages long.

I refer to the previous Dáil when the leader of the Minister's party highlighted correspondence I had with the then Ceann Comhairle when I was Chairman of the environment committee. The then Minister tabled a great number of amendments. During the course of Committee Stage I could see that nobody in the room had any idea what we were discussing because there were so many amendments and no explanatory memorandum was available. I wrote a trenchant letter to the Ceann Comhairle because I viewed it as unacceptable that so many amendments were tabled because it compromised proper consideration of that Bill. A bad job was done by the Oireachtas because of those procedures. The then Ceann Comhairle and the Committee on Procedure and Privileges immediately saw the merit of my argument and Standing Orders were amended as a result. In the case of this Bill before us, when on Monday morning I saw the scale of the amendments I immediately contacted the Ceann Comhairle's office and asked for an explanatory memorandum to the Bill. I was pleased when he immediately saw the wisdom of my request. He agreed we could not have a proper debate without the benefit of an explanatory memorandum and he requested that it be provided. I have not raised this matter in the House because it was all done properly through the procedures of the House. I intend no criticism of the staff of the Houses because I am sure they worked all the hours that God gave them in recent weeks in dealing with these amendments but it was 9 p.m. last night when the explanatory memorandum, 109 pages long, was provided to Members. I am not criticising the staff. It is a large document because it deals with each of the amendments which accounts for 30 pages and it includes 17 pages of new material and this was available to us last night. I can cope with that on Committee Stage and I suggest we can muddle through with Committee Stage today. However, we have now just received notice of 120 Government amendments which dramatically change a large part of the Bill and the Opposition has had no opportunity under the rules of the House to make any amendments to the Minister's proposals in his amendments. The major portion of what is in front of us has only been seen for the first time and the Opposition has had no opportunity to put down amendments. The explanatory memorandum was only available last night and it is making it impossible for us to table amendments in advance of Committee Stage because this could not be done at 9 o'clock this morning. I could cope with this if Report Stage were taken next week and we would have the weekend in which to table amendments. My problem is not to do with the timetable for Committee Stage - we will get over the fact of the guillotine - but with so many Committee Stage amendments to deal with there will not be an opportunity for a separate Report Stage and Final Stage as these will all be rammed through on a vote at 5 p.m. We will then be left wondering in years to come why mistakes were made. We should have been given time over the weekend to draft amendments. We have waited three months for this legislation and another week would have been valuable to get everything right on Report Stage. I am sure that if given the opportunity over the coming days to review the Government amendments carefully, Fianna Fáil and the other parties in opposition would have tabled amendments on Report Stage. However, this is being denied to us by the House. I know the Minister agrees with me but that is how the system works. I thought Dáil reform might have taken some of those matters into account.

I thank the Minister for providing a briefing session for the Opposition on this significant legislation in the limited time available to us. We asked for information on the number of Acts to be amended by this legislation. We were informed by e-mail after 8 p.m. last night - I thank the officials for working so late - that the quantity of legislation amended was estimated at approximately 200 statutes by the Bill as initiated and by the amendments. We are now beginning Committee Stage with tabled amendments which will affect 200 statutes. This, in my opinion, is the largest amount of amendments to statutes we have ever dealt with. No Finance Bill amends 200 statutes but this is what is happening by way of amendments and the Opposition has not an opportunity to table an amendment in respect of any of those amendments involving 200 statutes because Report Stage is being taken this evening. I do not know if it is in order.

Perhaps the Deputy can contact his Whip to agree that we will finish Committee Stage here and get a revised order from the Whip in the early afternoon to take Report and Final Stages next week. I understand that we should receive four days notice of amendments. It would give us the opportunity to complete the Bill in an orderly manner. The Deputy may say the Dáil has discussed it openly, fully and thoroughly. I know he cannot be happy that we are not being given any opportunity to discuss the Bill.

That is the background to why we are where we are. A great deal of business is being rushed. We could have waited one more week to finalise the Bill. I received a document comprising 105 pages at 9 p.m. last night and then received another two pages of substitute amendments which refer to typographical errors and different things. I am sure the Ceann Comhairle had to give special permission to table substitute amendments. It is an example of the rush we have today. We have to make that point going into this debate. The two items specifically referred to are included in the amendments, which are very much in order.

On the two issues we are discussing, I have made my comments and will not have to repeat myself on Committee Stage. The NTMA was originally set up to manage the scale of the national debt many years ago. It was a good idea at the time.

I met Mr. Michael Somers at the Committee of Public Accounts on several occasions. I was impressed by the quality of his contributions and his ability and have no argument with that. Not disclosing his pay scale is a bone of contention. We will discuss pay scales in a moment. The former Minister, the late Mr. Brian Lenihan, wanted to set up a banking unit in the NTMA and the new Minister wants to bring it into the Department of Finance.

Now is the time to bring the NTMA back into the Department of Finance. That is my main point. Sometimes I wonder what the NTMA is doing because we are not in the bond markets and are not issuing Government bonds. Bonds are being redeemed but the IMF and EU agreement helps us to refinance them. The level of activity on the open commercial market means the NTMA has built up a tremendous level of expertise. We are locked out of it for the foreseeable future. With the financial crisis and the euro, some of the events are so large they are beyond the control of the staff of the NTMA.

The NTMA should be brought back into the Department of Finance. During the banking crisis Mr. Somers pointed out that it was suggested to him that he put some money on deposit in Anglo Irish Bank and he put in a minimal amount, €40 million out of the billions he had. Why did he do that? He had no hard evidence; he had the same evidence as everyone else. His gut instinct told him something was not good about the bank.

People have asked if nobody knew on the night of the bank guarantee scheme that Anglo Irish Bank was a rogue and bankrupt bank. The Regulator, the Governor of the Central Bank and the Department of Finance did not seem to know that, yet the gut instinct of a man in a stand-alone agency told him that. I do not know if he was in the loop during the discussions because he was head of a separate agency.

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