Liam Twomey (Fine Gael)

While we should all welcome the fact that Mr. Boucher has responded to public anger in regard to his pension by saying he will not now exercise the option of retiring at the age of 55 years, we should have in the House a serious debate on the issue, in respect of which the Government has fared very badly. It is clear that the Taoiseach said he could do nothing about the matter legally and that he has shown himself to be incredibly weak in taking on the banks and the current crisis in the public finances. We need to have a serious debate in the House on what is happening in the banks which are running riot. They, rather than the Government, are in control of the restructuring of the banking system. There is a need for the Taoiseach and at least the Minister for Finance to come to the House and show moral backbone in the taking on of senior officials in the banking sector.

The Leader of the House knows as well as I do that in the next budget the level of Government expenditure will be reduced by €1 billion. This means there will either be a pay cut for public sector workers or a cut in payments to social welfare recipients. If we allow the carry-on I described to continue in the meantime and if the people believe the banks are getting away with murder, there will be no public appetite for further cuts in Government spending. There is a need for serious debate on this issue and for the Minister for Finance to come to the House.

Another issue I would like to have debated in the House is completely unrelated to the news headlines at the moment. It is about the decoupling of agribusiness plcs from co-ops. Many of the plcs throughout the country involved in agribusiness are divesting themselves of the co-ops from which they first sprung. When one sees a sudden rise in value in those plcs that declare they are going to break away from their co-op roots, one has to ask whether this is a good idea. Co-ops are very important from a socioeconomic viewpoint to rural society as well as from a food security standpoint and they are crucial as economic entities. Both Houses of the Oireachtas need to have a serious debate as to what is happening in agribusiness at present because these enterprises are much bigger than anything we have talked about concerning rural Ireland over recent months. If anything were to go wrong in the future with co-ops because they were undercapitalised, had taken on too much debt or did not have proper business plans, the taxpayer could end up having to bail them out or else they would fail, which would be to the detriment of rural communities. I would like to have a serious debate on the changes that are occurring in agribusiness at this time.