Eugene Regan (Fine Gael)

I support Senator Fitzgerald's proposal to amend the Order of Business because the Minister must make a statement on this issue. If he does not understand the situation it is well set out by Patrick Honohan, professor of international financial economics at the department of economics in Trinity College Dublin today in The Irish Times and by David McWilliams in The Independent. We must recapitalise our banks if the banks are to play a role in avoiding a protracted recession. I ask that the Minister make a statement on that. There is an issue of further intervention by the Government. There are legislative frameworks in place to deal with that, such as the Asset Covered Securities Act 2001. The Minister must seriously address this issue.

I want to raise the issue of the report to the Oireachtas from the Morris tribunal and the statement in that report on the two public representatives, Jim Higgins MEP and Deputy Brendan Howlin, whose intervention unearthed the enormous injustice done to the McBrearty family. It is beyond me how the chairman of the tribunal could work into the script such negative statements about those two Opposition politicians.