Joe O'Toole (Independent)

The point made by Senator Cummins about the appointment referred to was raised previously by my colleague Senator Ross and it is significant. I ask Members to cast their minds back to the point made by me during the debate on the NAMA Bill last week when I said guidelines on credit control and the granting of credit were not worth the paper they were written on because the Minister could not direct the banks to do anything. I have felt all along that this is the case. We have no way of knowing whether this is the correct appointment. We can have views on it one way or the other, but the Minister needs to provide a legislative basis and statutory imperative for his decisions. There is no point in lifting the telephone or saying nice words to the banks, as it will not work in terms of the provision of credit or anything else. There should be a process agreed at the AGM by the shareholders for this appointment. The simple question of whether they would get someone else interested in the position would be answered if they placed an advertisement in the international newspapers. Nobody needs to argue about the matter.

Regarding the repayment and the reward, last week I referred to the French finance Minister raising this question. This week Mr. Gordon Brown announced he would publish legislation to allow him to intervene if he thought payments to bank leaders were too high. We should do the same here. We should not be arguing across the House every week, rather we should give in legislation the Minister for Finance the right to do certain things in his dealings with the banks. They should not be guidelines, words of advice or wish lists but decisions with a statutory basis. Until that is done in an open way, we will not know what is going on and will not be able to have trust and confidence.

I refer to the distraction caused by the Government's cynical announcement about laptops being given to every school. At a time when schools have neither a proper connection to broadband, when bandwidth is too narrow, even for one computer if there is one in the school, and when schools are dependent on a satellite connection where bandwidth is not wide enough and services are patchy and unreliable at domestic level, it seems this is a soft focus photo opportunity and a distraction from the real issues such as the attempts to increase the size of classes, reduce the amount of money for administration in schools and the numbers of teachers. This announcement should be put in its proper context. It is a cynical distraction from the real issues in the education system at a time when there is much more to be done. I talked about and asked for and welcomed the introduction of ICT in schools during the years but this is hardly the way to go about doing it. Let us have the broadband connection first and then we can proceed with the laptop scheme afterwards.