Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

I welcome Senators' interventions on the Bill. I should not comment on the other House but there was no such similar debate there. On confidentiality, the Minister would not notify the institution but would go straight to court for confirmation of the order. The purpose of the confidentiality subsection comes from the possibility of the Minister making an assessment that confidentiality will be broken, primarily within the institution itself, in order that he or she can move directly to court to deal with the matter. As we know from what happened in some of our financial institutions in recent years, we can see the wisdom of having a power of this type.

I had personal direct experience of negotiations with the former chief executive of Anglo Irish Bank shortly before the bank was offered capitalisation and ultimately nationalised. With such discussions, could we be certain there would not be media disclosures? There are circumstances where the system and its stability must be protected in the context of the institution being dealt with.

The Senator correctly raised another query relating to section 7(1)(d), which relates to the question of the rights of shareholders, classes of shareholders and the alteration of their rights. The Senator is quite right. If a valuable shareholding was interfered with, there could be questions of legal entitlement, which is a consideration of proportionality to which the Minister must have regard in implementing this legislation. On the other hand, if one has an institution which requires so much capital and cannot access it on the market and which has a residual shareholder class, plainly that residual shareholder class has assets of very low value, if any.