Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to have a couple of minutes to contribute to this important debate. In so doing, I wish to echo the sentiments expressed by Deputy Niall Collins in recognising the role of our own party leader in promoting and advancing the public interest cause. I also wish to mention the vital role played by my north Kildare constituency colleague, Deputy Catherine Murphy, who has proven herself to be particularly tenacious in advancing the issues involved.

The freedom of information requests that Deputy Catherine Murphy and others submitted have indicated quite clearly that up to about four years ago, the Department of Finance was aware of the difficulties and the breakdown in the relationship between IBRC and the Department. One wonders why the Minister for Finance did not intervene at that stage. One presumes he was in regular contact with John Moran when he came to work at the Department, although I do not know what the relationship was between the Minister and Alan Dukes, my neighbour and former constituency colleague. One would assume that the Minister had a good relationship with John Moran at least and would have been in receipt of information from him. I am struck by the very emphatic and political statements the Minister made in this House five weeks ago, when a motion from Fianna Fáil calling for the establishment of a tribunal was proposed.

In the past week, we have heard comments from the Minister of State, Deputy Simon Harris, about the information Deputy Catherine Murphy was seeking by way of parliamentary questions, suggesting that one would not expect to get an awful lot by way of parliamentary questions and that if one submitted a freedom of information request, one might expect to get much more information. That is so denigrating of the House. As a senior Minister in that Department, the Minister, Deputy Noonan, has a particular responsibility to ensure that the primacy of this House is respected.

We did not see much respect for Deputy Clare Daly earlier when she was speaking. I would not agree with a lot of what she had to say but she is certainly entitled to be listened to. I wonder if the level of disrespect that the House observed while she was speaking is not symptomatic of the disrespect that exists for the House in its entirety.

Our party leader met with the Minister for Finance, and I thank the Minister for the invitation and respect the fact that he has engaged with the Opposition. Deputy Martin spoke to the Minister about governance at the IBRC and the relationship between the IBRC and the Department of Finance. He raised the wealth management unit with the Minister and, to a certain extent, those concerns are now reflected in the terms of reference that have been agreed. However, when the Minister and his colleagues seek to justify the establishment of the commission of inquiry now, having voted against it five weeks ago, they say they are doing so because there have been new allegations and there is a level of public concern. Let us ask ourselves what is that public concern. It is surely is that there may well have been an extraordinary level of preferential treatment meted out by a banking organisation under the control of the State to the super rich. This comes at the time when people in small businesses who are in arrears and others who are in mortgage difficulties are finding that the banks they are dealing with are screwing them to the wall. The other public concern that exists is whether there was some element of political knowledge or political collusion in respect of what was alleged to be going on in those banks.

The Minister, Deputy Heather Humphreys, talked about history repeating itself. In 2011, we were promised a new way of doing politics. The public concern at present is about whether Fine Gael is doing politics as it did at the time of the Moriarty tribunal.

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