Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak briefly again on this timely Bill. Society is now moving into a phase in which many questions are arising from the trauma of the past. As people start to get to grips with our past and face the future with more confidence, those questions need to be answered.

While I welcome the emphasis on the banking inquiry and the good work that will no doubt be done by that committee, a number of issues arise therein and we must look at the bigger picture. Many more questions remain to be asked about the overall impact of decisions and attitudes that evolved and developed during that time. The reality is that while the banks' collapse has been an enormous cost to us, it still represents only about 20% of our national debt. Therefore, around 80% of our national debt - the same debt that has crippled us financially for many years - also has the potential to cripple future generations when it must be paid back in full. I hope we will not lose sight of that by focusing all our energy on the banking inquiry.

I fear that a lot of time, energy, focus and effort will go into the banking inquiry at the expense of some deeper questions that need to be asked. One reason for this is the role the media will play in this regard. They will ensure it is popular to beat up the banks. In the past 24 hours, I heard someone in the media referring to paying back the bondholders €8 billion to €9 billion a year for bank debt. I presume the person was referring to the cost of interest on our borrowings, but 80% of those borrowings have nothing to do with the banks' collapse.

We should examine the role and function of all partners and players across society, including in politics and the media, in the run-up to this crash, especially as we see it being replicated today. RTE's "Morning Ireland" radio programme sets the agenda for the day. It always strikes me as peculiar how Leaders' Questions are effectively written by the producer of "Morning Ireland" every day. Parliament meets to discuss what is to be done but instead of being proactive, courageous, visionary and showing leadership, we are all caught up - led by the Opposition - with the questions of the day that appear on newspaper front pages or on "Morning Ireland", which admits to setting the agenda for the day. That is not as helpful as it could be.

The relevant committee is conducting the banking inquiry, which is timely, but as a Parliament we need to reassess and evaluate how we can better enhance our future role, while learning from the past and looking to the future. We should also look at the political decisions that were taken at the time.

In my constituency, a new initiative was set up at Christmas in the village of Leap in County Cork, called Leapland. I was talking to the proprietor recently, who said he had a great run at Christmas time. He had a huge influx of people and a lot of turnover, so he took on part-time staff. Under the previous government we set up our own little Leapland, but instead we took on everybody for a full year, never realising that takings would drop as soon as the Christmas season was over. In that case, the equivalent of Christmas was the silly season of a building bonanza, yet we have been left to carry the cost of that fatally flawed mistake. That has had an impact on 80% of our national debt, which is the gift we will keep on giving to future generations - our children and their children.

Perhaps we therefore need to widen the scope somewhat and allow the inquiry to examine not just the banking collapse but also the role of this Parliament's Members - individually and collectively - so that we can learn from the past. We should ask what we are doing to ensure that we do not make the same mistakes again.

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