The Taoiseach quoted with approval the high-level group's finding that the five-year moratorium on the release of Cabinet records was too short. I would argue about that. He also quoted the phrase, "It does not give Ministers the assurance that they require to commit views freely to the record if those views are to be divulged in such a relatively short space of time." The Minister is saying that the cream of our political talent, who have the support of one of the best civil services in Europe – which we see every time we have a Presidency – will not commit their views to paper because ordinary people, Members of this House or the public, would find out what they said in five years' time. What an insult to the political class of this country. If I were a member of a Government and a civil servant wrote that about me, I would hand it back to him and say it was insulting. It is profoundly insulting to suggest that the Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Deputy Parlon, with whom I have had delightful tangles in a previous existence as a member of the Committee on European Affairs, is inhibited from expressing his opinions because I might find out about them. Deputy Parlon was never slow to let me know his opinions and I suspect he never will be. If a civil servant wrote that about me, I would be insulted, as would any decent Minister. It is an insulting thing to say about Ministers unless the Ministers asked for something like that to be said to give them an excuse, a fig leaf to cover their nakedness or to justify the introduction of this legislation.