Paschal Donohoe (Fine Gael)

I support Senator Fitzgerald's call for a debate on the quality of regulation of our financial services industry. I have some figures to illustrate why this debate is so urgently needed. The financial markets price Government debt and decide how much somebody buying that debt should be willing to pay for it. Israel has a spread of 213 points. That will affect the interest rate charged for someone buying Israeli Government debt. Ireland has a spread of 378 points. The financial market believes that it is 77% more risky to buy Irish Government debt than it is to buy Israeli Government debt. These figures bring home to us the nature of the challenge faced by our country. To deal with this, I would like to make two constructive suggestions to the Leader.

The first suggestion is that all the regulatory authorities and banks in our country should be reconstituted and reformed immediately, because we need this kind of decisive action to deal with the issue that we are facing. The second suggestion is to ask about the Government's plan to restore the reputation of our country abroad with the people making these decisions. I appreciate and understand the willingness of the Government's representatives to meet the owners of Dell to try to rescue jobs, but we need a similar programme to ensure the people who buy our debt and decide how much it will cost us to do business in future have a better understanding of what is being done here to deal with what is becoming a crisis.