Joe O'Toole (Independent)

The progress on the investigations at various levels is welcome. It is worth noting that without making any comment on the people involved. There was much debate on the issue here and people were asking if anything was happening. We were assured that was the case. We now see that at least something is happening and we hope it will come to a conclusion.

There is also the question of the increase in salaries in the bank. People are upset about that, and they have a right to be. Rather than people talking about how good or bad that is, I would like to have a breakdown of the way it was done. That can be simply done. If three people are working at 100 units of salary each, which is costing the enterprise 300 units of salary, and it can now get two people to do that for 220 units of salary, it is saving a huge amount of money even though it is giving a 10% increase to each of the two people. We must be sensible about this issue. If that is not the case, however, and money is being handed out money to people willy-nilly, we should be critical of it. The problem is we are not getting the information and there is too much coyness in the response from the bank authorities. I do not want to know the names of people but I want to see the process that was put in place, the savings that were achieved and the position before and after that. I also want to know the state of employment of these people because there was an indication at one point that these were permanent staff but there was an indication at another point that this would simply be for staff employed to do a particular job for a particular period of time. The point I am making is that salary negotiations tend to be complex and we must deal with those in a way that allows us to be informed.

I ask the Leader if we could get a briefing from a Minister on exactly how the bank went about this and what exactly happened. I am not asking any Minister to interfere. Members on both sides of the House are clear that we do not want ministerial interference but we want to ensure our Ministers and the Houses of the Oireachtas are fully informed of the methodology used to run the banks and determine wage increases, and the way we are being protected.

In the early 1980s one of the most bitter disputes in which I was ever involved in trade unionism was on the question of school entry to primary schools with the then Taoiseach, Garrett FitzGerald. We fought with each other but he is a man I hold in the highest regard. He is an iconic figure in Irish politics and he deserves better respect from all sides. I was never a member of his party but I would not take from him the huge contribution he has made to Irish politics.