Joe O'Toole (Independent)

The offer is there. They would have to work out how it is to be done, but the offer is there.

To come back to the core of the Bill, I believe every joint committee should get a letter from the Taoiseach or the Minister for Finance stating that job creation in the committee's sector should be top of the agenda for the year and that the Government wants to see results and ideas coming from each committee on job creation in each sector, whether it relates to energy, natural resources or otherwise.

I spoke this morning to Deputy Simon Coveney, who has some very good ideas on the whole area of natural resources, including in the Minister of State's constituency. There is a tidal flow of 5 knots twice a day in the Limerick estuary which could, for example, be used by a company called OpenHydro which is based across the road from Leinster House and which got a huge commitment from the Scottish Government to operate in the Shetland Islands. While I am not suggesting the potential is as good in the Shannon estuary, there is potential. There is similar potential in the Leas-Chathaoirleach's constituency around the Achill islands and in north-west Mayo, which has the most energy-rich waves in all of Europe at 2.5 m.

I have not spoken to the Minister about my amendment because I do not want to bother him at present as he is under enough pressure. I asked for the issue to be dealt with in the Dáil and it was raised by Fine Gael and the Labour Party. While I will deal with the matter in detail on Committee Stage, I would appreciate if the Minister of State would listen to my argument.

The issue is as follows. In the event of medical negligence cases in the courts, where negligence is found at present, an award is made to some person. The case might involve, say, damage at birth or an accident. The award is made by calculating that the person has a certain life expectancy and it will cost a certain amount per year to look after him or her. Therefore, the judge has no choice but to multiply the remaining years by the quantum per year, add in costs, legal fees and all the rest and arrive at the figure to be awarded. The award is tax free.

This system was introduced at various times by a Fianna Fáil-Labour Party Government and a Fine Gael-Labour Party Government, so all of the parties present were involved in the changes. Deputy Pat Rabbitte was involved in the changes as part of the Fianna Fáil-Labour Party Government and the former Taoiseach, Mr. John Bruton, was involved at another time.

My point is as follows. Medical science has advanced to such a degree that it is no longer that easy to decide somebody who has had a serious accident will be completely and permanently incapable of normal independent living for the rest of his or her natural life. Therefore, the simple thing to do would be to make an annual award and put aside money for the cost per year.

This is what the Judiciary wants and what the insurance industry feels is fair. I am the vice chairman of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board. While the board does not deal with these cases, I am very aware of what happens as we have very closely examined this area. This area was also examined ten years ago by the Law Reform Commission, which made the recommendation that such awards should not fall due for tax.

I understand the Department of Finance was agreed on this point until just before Christmas. However, it has now backed off due to a fear, as was stated in the other House, that a possibility arose that this would lead to its decision going ahead of the law. That is not the case. This is a very simple issue with no real revenue implications because such revenue implications have been covered in the original legislation. The amendment seeks to allow judges to award a per annum amount rather than a lump sum quantum.

How does this help industry? It helps because it affects the cost of insurance. If the person held liable is in industry, the person's insurance company is liable for the total amount, whereas that total amount might not be necessary because a person might recover or be able to utilise later advances in medical science, whatever the medical condition, and a lesser amount would need to be paid. Everybody is a winner in this situation. It is simple and straightforward change which I ask the Minister to make.

I wish to raise a further issue. The then Minister, Mr. McCreevy, introduced changes to the pension provisions some seven years ago with my full support and he discussed them with me at the time. We were worried about the fact that in the case of a lump sum, it was necessary to buy annuities, which were very poor value. Not only that, if a person died, the lump sum did not go to the person's estate but went back to the insurance company, so nothing was left for the remaining family.

The then Minister, Mr. McCreevy, introduced legislation to the effect that on retirement one could take a certain amount of a lump sum - I believe it was 25%, although the amount is not important. The rest had either to be invested in annuities, which use the old-fashioned system whereby one would get the money on an annual basis and it would go back to the insurance company when the person passed away, or, alternatively, it was put into an ARP fund and the person got income from it each year and paid his or her income tax on that. When the person dies, the remaining amount goes to the person's estate.

What is happening is that this income is subject to PRSI, which I assure the Minister of State was never the intention of Mr. McCreevy. One does not pay PRSI on annuities and he did not intend at any stage that people would be worse off by choosing the other option.

We must remember that, with annuities, a person gets more of an income but loses control of the money, whereas if the person puts it into the fund, the money still effectively belongs to the person or the person's estate. I would like to hear a response on both of those issues.

On the question of banking, we need to define what is a bank. One of the things that happened in the past ten years is that we forgot what banks are. Banks suddenly became financial institutions, building societies, developers, entrepreneurs and builders under various different names, and they were certainly involved in sub-prime lending and all sorts of variations of financial services. This cannot happen any longer because it is what created the bank we could not deal with. This needs to be defined under the articles of association of each bank.

Although he got no credit for it, Commissioner McCreevy has done extraordinarily good work in Europe. A crucial aspect of his portfolio concerning regulation was to try to get agreement on audit, accounting and banking standards. We need to introduce regulations in Europe, the UK and the US in order to ensure one aspect cannot be played off against the other, either by movement or, worse, when they are working on the difference between the regulations here and the regulations there. These are issues that need to be addressed.

In conclusion, with regard to the national partnership, what we in this country need is for everyone to work together. We do not want people arguing outside the Passport Office and making us look like a Third World country. We need to get past this. We need to get everybody onside and convince them plausibly to work together. This country needs to be governed, the Government needs to get money, people need to increase their productivity and we need to create employment. We will do that by working together so we need to get the partnership programmes back together.