Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I will explain to the Leader, if she wants to listen to me, that we need discussions in this House in which people take positions and have to stand over them, not waffly speeches where nobody has to take a position and which enable various people to tell their constituents, in effect, that they never voted for certain things. We want some degree of accountability on the part of those who claim credit for everything.

I support Senator O'Toole's compliments to the Oireachtas committee mentioned in motion No. 1. I will say no more on that, but I would like to point out that another committee, the DIRT inquiry, was more successful on its own at recovering revenue that had been taken from the State than the entire activities of the Revenue Commissioners for ten years before that or indeed the efforts made by the Department of Finance. That was a committee comprising seven people whose combined salaries would not equate with that of one of the bankers they grilled so effectively. Politicians can do a good job when they are given the power, authority and resources. There are forces in some large Departments determined to ensure the Houses of the Oireachtas are never properly resourced so that we operate on a shoe-string. We will see when the Minister of Finance comes into this House with the Finance Bill, there will be 15 to 20 civil servants with him, including up to three in the Chamber, to make sure he does not put a foot wrong. If one goes to an Oireachtas committee to quiz senior bankers one is lucky to have half a civil servant concentrating on it. The Oireachtas is the most under-resourced part of the whole apparatus of parliamentary democracy in this State.