Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy called for a suite of measures; that is exactly what is happening. Last year, the Minister, Deputy Flanagan, introduced a suite of measures in November and he has added to it since then. There is a whole series of legislative responses which I have spoken about. The Deputy, like everybody else, will have an opportunity to raise specific issues he would like to see addressed through that legislation and he will get a response from the Minister, Deputy Flanagan. I am not going to get into what the content of individual legislative items will be without testing that and I am not going to give the Deputy an answer on the hoof.

What I will say is that the Government wants a comprehensive suite of measures to respond robustly to white-collar crime to make sure we protect consumers and do not allow the kind of banking decisions that were made in the past that virtually bankrupted this country. We are absolutely committed to that. This party wants to ensure that the mistakes of the past are not repeated, that boom-bust cycles do not happen in the future and that we do not allow a banking system to dominate an economy in a negative way such as happened in the past. As I said previously, if the Deputy has suggestions to make in the context of the debates that are happening - be it legislation coming from Sinn Féin or the Government - there will be more than ample opportunity to discuss the detail of those proposals in this House.

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