John Paul Phelan (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Gallagher, to the House. I am somewhat satisfied with part of what he has said. He noted that the Minister envisages the possibility of lowering the threshold in the future.

We come back to the financial institutions that will be affected by this. I would imagine that many accounts, particularly older ones, would fall under the €500 threshold, and it is not unreasonable that a threshold should have been used similar to the one that was used for the dormant bank accounts legislation, which was, I believe, around €100. It would have been more appropriate to set a threshold like that.

We are revisiting the argument that the financial institutions will be inconvenienced and will have to go to some expense to follow up on all these smaller accounts that are not yet computerised. However, these companies have had the benefit of this money that has lain dormant for however long, and it would not be too much to expect that the threshold would be considerably lower because €500 is a not inconsiderable amount of money. A lower threshold would be more appropriate.