Feargal Quinn (Independent)

Will the Deputy Leader draw to the attention of the responsible Ministers some good news from Brussels yesterday. With decisions needing to be made on the referendum later in the year, we should look for any good news. The Commissioner for Competition has got agreement from MasterCard on interchange fees for debit and credit cards. It will mean a dramatic reduction — not as much as some of us would have like to have seen — every time we use those cards. It will mean a very large sum of money that will be of benefit to consumers in Europe. It reduces the fee from 1.9% to 0.2% in the case of debit cards, which is quite dramatic. It would not have happened unless Europe had grabbed hold of the issue. It does not go quite as far as some of us would have liked to have seen it go. It only applies to cross-border fees. Now it is in the hands of each national government to introduce the same sort of legislation to ensure we all get the benefit rather than having to give the benefit to the banks. It is one of the benefits of Europe.

I also want to give an interesting challenge to Europe and to the Ministers responsible. It relates to having a fixed date for Easter. Senators may well ask what that has to do with Europe. This year Easter will fall on the second Sunday of April. We assume that this is all to do with the churches. Some 40 years ago at the Second Vatican Council the Catholic church announced that it had no objection to having a fixed date for Easter. Some 20 or 30 years ago the then Pope actually proposed the second Sunday in April as a fixed date. Such a change would have many benefits. The World Council of Churches has also supported the move. Europe should grab a hold of this issue to knock together the heads of all those who discuss the matter. The benefits would be substantial.

Europe has managed to get us to change to summer time on the one date in March every year and to change back again in October. It has got us to use the same prefix for telephone numbers — 00. It has done a number of things that have been of considerable benefit. It seems that if we were to ask the Commission to investigate the possibility of having a fixed date for Easter, the benefit to business, the community, education and tourism would be very substantial. I ask the Deputy Leader to draw this to the attention of the Ministers responsible and to put it on the agenda so it can be regarded as of huge benefit to the community as a whole.