Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

No, I have been consistent on these issues during the years. If the Minister checks the record, he will find that I have been consistent on them. I have never bought into the god that the European Union and its followers in this country have made out of competition. Did the Minister ever think ComReg had arrived at an incorrect decision? Has he ever criticised a decision made by a regulator in this country? Did he ever think a regulator had failed in its national duty? I put it to him that on numerous occasions he criticised the banking regulator who was acclaimed as a great independent regulator. One of the lessons we learned in government was that giving too much independence to regulators made us vulnerable. We often discussed this issue and, if we made a mistake, it was to make these bodies too independent of the Government, the Oireachtas and the political system. The notion that the Minister has never criticised the decision of a regulator is laughable. I wish I had time to count all of the occasions on which he claimed regulators had got it wrong.

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