Eugene Regan (Fine Gael)

The word "may" in a Bill can mean "shall" but in this instance it does not. I suggest the Minister could cut short the debate on this entire section by changing the word "may" to "shall". I understood this was part of the undertaking given to the Green Party and part of the Government-Green Party new deal that there were to be commitments on lending. This was a watered down version of that commitment, a bit like the levy, but I would have thought that a commitment that the Minister shall issue guidelines was the minimum that would be expected in that context but since the Minister has indicated that it is the intention to issue guidelines, we could cut this debate short by simply changing the word "may" to "shall".