Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach has enlightened us on an entirely new departure in Irish politics. He has now cast establishment party leaders - Taoiseach and Ministers - as gifted artists who shower embellishments on their citizenry instead of a solid plan as to what they will do to try to improve the circumstances of the people and the country. Can the Taoiseach share with us what other embellishments are contained in this very weighty document? Since he has shown himself, along with others, to be such a gifted artist and embellisher, we can assume that there are quite a lot of embellishments in this document, but he might point them out to us now so that we do not waste our time trying to call him to account any more for what is to be implemented under it.

We used to take for granted that the political party programmes of the establishment in the election phase were largely an embellishment, but in terms of what a government or the parties going into government put together, we used to have some hope that there would be some reality to it. This impinges on the banking inquiry. The Taoiseach's programme for Government - perhaps he will tell me this is also an embellishment - states that the Government is too centralised and unaccountable. It further states that the failures of the political system were a key contributor to the financial crisis, that the system must now learn those lessons urgently and that the Government would legislate on Cabinet confidentiality. There was a clear logic in this.

The Taoiseach set up a banking inquiry, although, of course, too late. The legislation totally circumscribes its membership. The only benefit is that people who were central to the blowing up of the bubble pre-crash can be called in and questioned. However, the Cabinet meeting around the bank guarantee, for example, is absolutely critical. We do not know yet what answers we will be given when the people who were central actors in that are called before the committee and questioned. How long will that confidentiality cover? It was a night of long phone calls, was it not? The extent of those discussions will obviously be very central to what people want to find out through the banking inquiry. I am afraid, in light of what the Taoiseach said, that he will point blank refuse to have any change of Cabinet confidentiality. This writes the whole thing off as a pretty useless embellishment.

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