David Norris (Independent)

Amendment No. 63 states the Minister "shall cause a copy of guidelines issued under subsection (1) to be laid before each House of the Oireachtas as soon as practicable". I hope that will be done very soon because today the banks are down a further 9%, which marks a further collapse. This is desperately serious and we need to act with the greatest possible speed.

On a technical drafting matter, it is obvious that the Minister should accept the change from the word "may" to "shall", but I would like to have the power to say he must accept that change. Otherwise, his own amendment is a nonsense because he includes the word "shall" in the amendment. He cannot force himself to issue a copy of something; therefore, he must include the word "shall". This is a partisan but partly a grammatical point. The world will not fall apart if he does this and it would have the added advantage of making him look intelligent.