Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I want to make a point on the issue raised by Senator O'Toole. The bank, which is taking over NIB, has twice the capitalisation of either of the two big Irish banks and generates about the same level of profits, which speaks volumes about the degree to which we are being ripped off. The Competition Authority has just issued a report, which did no more than confirm what we all knew, namely that Irish consumers are being ripped off by the effective collusion of the Irish banks. We did not need the Competition Authority to tell us that; we needed it to do something about it, but it has singularly failed.

I am glad the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform is proposing to do something about the status of all those Irish children who until recently he was threatening to deport. I welcome his proposals. However, I do not understand why the parents of those children are still being denied the right to work. The argument used to be that it would be a factor to draw further illegal immigration and further abuse of the asylum system. This cannot be the case. Why will they not be allowed to work? Some of these people have been here for years and some have children close to secondary school at this stage. I did a back-of-an-envelope calculation and based on the Minister's figures those families not allowed to work are probably costing the State between €100 million and €150 million per year. Why does the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform on the one hand highlight the cost of supporting asylum seekers and on the other hand refuse to allow a group of people in a unique situation to work? I can only suspect that it is because work is the way in which people——