John Crown (Independent)

I wish to preface my questions to the Minister by offering him a very personal and very belated thanks for the attention he gave to cancer services when he was Minister for Health. On his first day as Minister he gave a speech which has been forgotten but should not be in which he was the first person from the public side of governance to acknowledge the disaster which was our cancer treatment service. He set out his stall with regard to attempting to fix it and I wish to offer him my thanks for his courage and foresight.

I wish to ask two financial questions. The first relates to privately-held pension funds. I have been doing some research and at a time of a significant shortage of liquidity or money or solvency, whatever one wishes to call it, it is estimated that €100 billion is held in pension funds by Irish private pension investors. This money has been legally collected with the assistance of various tax incentives over the years and this investment is regarded as part of a prudent provision for people's old age. A total of 95% of that money is held outside the State and mostly held in foreign investments. Many of the people who made these prudent personal investments took the advice from people who in previous generations were to be trusted, such as bank managers, mortgage advisors, real estate agents, that they should buy real estate-----