Paul Coghlan (Fine Gael)

I call for a debate in early course on banking for a host of reasons, not least being those serious matters touched on this morning by the Leader of the Opposition, Senator O'Brien, and Senators Conway and Ó Domhnaill. In addition, as has been acknowledged, now that the State has such a stake in the two pillar banks we should discuss the role of the public interest directors, of whom there are very few to represent such a huge majority stake. Questions must be asked about the number of personnel, their role and function and why there are not more of them.

Unfortunately, some people who steered the ship onto the rocks remain as a legacy and this is disgraceful. Perhaps as seriously, if not more so, as I have pointed out before some people in senior management positions had left the institutions and were brought back, which I find impossible to understand but which happened in at least one case in one of the two pillar banks. These matters need to be seriously examined. For all of these reasons, we need to have this debate urgently and I call on the Leader to have it as early as possible. How have people remained in senior positions when they were responsible so many wrong, frightful and awful decisions which got us into this mess? Now, they are managing impaired portfolios on an agency basis on behalf of NAMA. I will not go further into it.