David Norris (Independent)

Can the Leader request the Minister for Transport to come to the House to explain the visa waiver scheme and his discussions with Mr. Michael Chertoff? According to this morning's edition of The Irish Times, he will be required to transmit information about Irish citizens, including fingerprints, information about their religious views, sexual orientation and so on. It did not say that this was confined to members of the criminal class. The sharing of information on the fingerprints of criminals is reasonable and legitimate, but I cannot think why religious views or sexual orientation should be made available to the United States Government, which has a notorious record in maintaining these things privately.

Mr. Ganley of Libertas was before an Oireachtas committee today. I will be very interested to read the transcripts and see if he was probed about associations with the American defence establishment that have been widely suggested in the newspapers. If he was, this might well explain some of his opposition to the Lisbon treaty. It would also confirm me in my view about the increasing militarisation proposed under the treaty. I repeatedly asked in this House about the status of the European armaments group, which was renamed the European Defence Agency and which for the first time is statutorily included in the architecture of the European Union under this treaty, but I failed to get any answer to it. The American arms industry would not welcome the establishment of a concentrated and effective European munitions industry with a strong export potential, which has been envisaged. If this continues in the Lisbon treaty, I will very reluctantly have to campaign against the second referendum.

We have raised the issue of management committees on this side of the House many times and I am glad to see the Government is now coming on board. One of the sinister things that could perhaps be addressed by legislation is that developers can refuse to hand over to a democratically elected tenants' management committee as long as they retain one unsold unit. They regularly do this so that they can hand out contracts to their friends and charge whatever they like. This is something about which we should legitimately be worried.

Although the issue of the banks has been widely discussed, we are due another debate on that. Bank of Ireland shares have collapsed and are below €1, while a year ago they were valued at €18. What about the people who have invested their life savings in this? I was chairman of the board of a number of charitable companies. I received nothing from them but I made very sure that I did not trade recklessly. That is an offence under law. These people clearly traded recklessly but what is happening to them? If we are going to capitalise, will we give them more money and leave them there? I certainly would not be happy handing out money to capitalise people who obviously traded recklessly in the past.