Shane Ross (Independent)

I also wish to be associated with the tributes to former President Hillery. I regret that I was unable to attend the funeral yesterday. However, it is appropriate that everyone should pay tribute to this man who was, in his quiet way, as great a President as we have had.

I also wish to ask the Leader of the House to facilitate a full debate on financial regulation. While it sounds like a boring topic, it is highly important. At present financial regulation in Ireland is in a state of chaos and the high profile cases about which many people will have read in recent weeks show an inconsistency that is alarming. The House will be aware there was much rumpus about dealings in certain stocks and that the Financial Regulator came in rather late, supposedly to investigate those dealings.

However, there does not appear to be any consistency in what is happening. A couple of weeks ago, The Irish Times was fined, as was Phoenix magazine a little earlier. While I will not go into the details, they were fined €10,000 and €5,000, respectively, by the Financial Regulator for what appeared to be reasonably small offences. However, while the aforementioned offences were being punished with a great deal of fanfare and publicity, which was orchestrated by the Financial Regulator, another case in Dublin was finalised last Monday. I refer to the DCC v. Fyffes case, about which no one has done anything to attempt to remedy what happened.

This was an extremely serious case and was much more serious than what happened in respect of The Irish Times and Phoenix magazine. I now am free to talk about the case because it no longer is before the courts. There was a finding of insider dealing by the Supreme Court and none of the institutions that are meant to regulate the goings on at the Stock Exchange and in financial dealings did anything or have done anything thus far. I refer specifically to institutions such as the Irish Association of Investment Managers or IBEC, which as far as I am aware, has said nothing about it. The Stock Exchange and the Financial Regulator itself have allowed a situation — Senator Quinn referred to this some time ago — to develop whereby Ireland's regulation is a laughing stock.

In no other financial centre in the world would one of the largest companies in the State be able to make money out of what the Supreme Court has found to be insider dealing without anything happening. The whole matter simply went away. The insiders have eyeballed the regulator and the regulators have blinked because they themselves are insiders. Many of them, while not collaborating, are fearful of taking on people who are committing what at the least are torts.

It is imperative that the Leader of the House should allow Members to air these issues and to ask what is going on. This would not happen in the United States and I doubt whether it would happen in the United Kingdom. I can think of no other financial centre in which the sort of shenanigans that went on in the DCC v. Fyffes case would be allowed to continue. I ask the Leader to facilitate a debate on this issue.