Joe O'Toole (Independent)

——who have been paying for the second most expensive electricity in Europe over the past ten years, completely unnecessarily, in order to comply with a policy option of Government to open up the market. There is something daft about that. Twenty years ago I used to argue with people in the trade union movement who were bound up in principle on issues of nationalisation and privatisation. The same thing is happening now in government. If somebody would give a little injection of pragmatism into some of these decisions as we go along, life would become easier. I ask therefore that we consider the general issue of regulation and particularly the point made by Senator Fitzgerald.

It would be nice to offer a view, be asked for a view or be consulted about the nature of financial services regulation. Many of us questioned at length the decision to break up the regulatory system and remove the responsibility from the Governor of the Central Bank when this was done five or six years ago. It did not seem to make sense then, or at least there was no practical reason for it. Now we are changing things back. We need to consider these issues seriously and we can do so in a way that allows everybody to have his or her say and Government may be informed by it.