Déirdre de Búrca (Green Party)

I look forward to the debate on the Credit Institutions (Financial Support) Bill 2008 later this evening. As my colleague, Senator Ó Murchú, said yesterday, we have a choice in this regard. We have seen the political response to this issue in the United State in terms of the bail-out proposed there. It would appear that a certain party responded more in a highly populist and political way than in the interests of the US economy. I hope that when we debate this issue later, we keep the interests of the economy, the taxpayer and the people at the heart of the debate.

I raise an issue on which I touched yesterday concerning the protection the Government is offering to six financial institutions. Other financial institutions operate in this country in which Irish people have savings and so on, but these institutions will not be offered the same protection. I reiterate the point I made yesterday that we need to start to look at an EU-wide approach to regulating our financial institutions.

A Belgian company operating in Belgium, France and another EU member state raised the issue of difficulties where it is necessary for a state to intervene and offer protection to an institution or bail it out. If a financial institution operates in a number of member states, it can be very difficult to do that. In the future, we will see financial institutions operating in many member states. When these difficulties with our financial systems arise in the future, we will need a regulator or a regulatory system capable of transcending borders.

While I welcome what the Government is doing at this time, we need to look ahead. I encourage the Minister for Finance and other Ministers, in their discussions in the Council of Ministers, to raise this issue and to be proactive in trying to ensure that an EU-wide system of financial regulation of markets is designed and planned in the coming months.