Paschal Donohoe (Fine Gael)

I support the calls for a debate on local authority funding. At the end of last week Dublin City Council was told it would need to cut back dramatically on its social housing programme for the coming year. I represent many of those people and frequently deal with people who have been on waiting lists for between five and ten years. Those people have seen the Government galvanise itself to put in place a guarantee of at least €500 billion, yet the money cannot be found to put in place housing programmes for the people who need them most. This raises serious questions that should be debated and answered in the House. I support the call for debate on the issue.

I wish to make a brief number of points on the debate we will have this evening. There have been a number of calls this morning for the setting up of cross-European institutions to deal with the issue. Before we consider doing that, we should have a discussion on the European institutions we already have, particularly the European Central Bank. There is little doubt that its monetary policy and the decisions it has made on interest rates have contributed to the mess in which we now find ourselves. That should be discussed in national parliaments.

The issue of compensation packages has been mentioned. Stock options have been a major driver of reckless and irresponsible behaviour on the part of banks. We will now find that, because of the decisions made by this Government, the stock options of executives in these companies have gone through the roof. Regardless of the decisions we make or the content of the legislation which comes before us this evening, we have to address that issue.

I will conclude by referring to the way we have discussed the economy. Whenever commentators from the Opposition or the media raised concerns about the way our economy and banking and financial services sector operated, they were called unpatriotic and accused of talking down the economy. Debate on the subject was thereby curtailed or prevented. We are now seeing the consequences of that lack of serious debate.