Liam Twomey (Fine Gael)

The way in which this legislation is being brought through the Houses of the Oireachtas is making Members look like incompetent idiots in the eyes of the public, which is looking at what we are doing. There are 27 amendments left in the Dáil. If they spent five minutes on each of those amendments, it would take until midnight. It has been on amendment No. 1 for four hours, so the chance of that legislation being finished in the Dáil by midnight is next to impossible because there is no guillotine.

We are deluding ourselves into thinking that we will be debating the Bill an hour and a half after the Committee Stage debate resumes in the Dáil. The 9 o'clock news will indicate that we cannot make up our minds when we want to start or finish the legislation which is considered so vital to the banking sector of this country. Let us be realistic, stop fooling ourselves and making eejits of ourselves in the eyes of the pubic and postpone the debate until the morning.