David Norris (Independent)

I thank the Minister of State for a most interesting and informative statement. It gets worse by the minute. I may be out on a limb, perhaps with my colleagues from Sinn Féin, but I have a couple of points to make. There has been a comparison with diplomatic immunity etc., and terrorists were brought into the debate. I do not know how al-Qaeda was brought into it. No legal instrument will protect against that group as if somebody wants to blow something up, it could be done. However, that is not relevant to this debate.

Senator Thomas Byrne has made the interesting comment that he assumes there is some kind of disciplinary procedure in place. Perhaps the Minister of State might let us know if there is. I have said the following on a number of occasions, but I am unsure if I have done so in the presence of the Minister of State. There should be an international court to try individuals and organisations for economic crimes against humanity. It happened at Nuremberg with IG Farben, Thyssen, Krupp and others. One hopes the ESM will work all right, but I would like to think the idea would eventually be taken up, with people being held accountable, as appropriate.

I wonder what is meant by the archives being inviolable. As I would not want to see them being destroyed, they should be inviolable in the sense that they should be immune from attack or destruction. Will the Minister of State reassure me that they will be accessible to scholars?

The most farcical element is that immunity extends only to personnel acting in an official capacity. I gave the example of Mr. Berlusconi and was perhaps a little unfair to him. However, I am not interested in his bunga bunga. I am not interested in any of them. I simply could not care less, they do not interest me. I cared about Donie Cassidy's golfing holidays because I thought they brought the Seanad into disrepute but I do not care about private lives. I do not care. It is exactly their official capacity that concerns me. If they make mistakes with my money, I am worried; if they pick their noses at mass, I do not care. It is their official capacity that interests me and that should be central so I do not understand why the Minister of State is saying this.

The Minister of State then gave a couple of examples. I am glad he cited the United Nations, it is a classic example. The utter lack of democracy and accountability in the United Nations is precisely why it is standing idly by again while people are being murdered in Syria. The reason is that a small group of nations, five in number, the permanent members of the Security Council, each have a veto. Like this, it is undemocratic. That is not a good example from the Minister of State. I have always strongly supported the United Nations but I remember the late Erskine Childers, who was either the son or the nephew of our distinguished former President and he was a senior United Nations official. He gave a series of very interesting lectures on RTE radio. He was passionate about his commitment to the United Nations but he highlighted the democratic deficit in the body and I fear the democratic deficit allowed under this Bill.

In this case, with the ESM, we have a hermetically sealed unit with these enormous sums of money at its disposal but it is accountable to no one, not to the legislature, the judiciary or the police. There should be some protection for any country that has a grouse against it. I was also concerned about something that was let slip, that this is to do with diplomatic immunity in terms of the personnel involved, including their tax. I would hate to think people given charge of this enormous amount of imaginary Monopoly money so they can cook the books would not pay tax for the privilege of doing it.

If we give this total, comprehensive immunity and lack of accountability, the staff of the ESM are not answerable to the police. We are not necessarily talking about An Garda Síochána, there is Interpol. I am not expecting the gardaí to raid the offices of the ESM or for the fraud squad in Harcourt Street to do an audit but I do not think putting in place blanket inviolability and making them immune is a good idea. No thanks, I want answers and I want people to be accountable. I want to know what they are doing and I do not want them to do it behind closed doors because that always leads to trouble.

The example of the United Nations is a very good one and I thank the Minister of State for handing it to me. Let us reform the United Nations, make it accountable, remove the veto from the five permanent members and make it something decent. We should make the ESM decent by establishing an international court to try people for economic crimes. I will supply a list of them, including Goldman Sachs and all the ratings agencies. They are still around and no one is bothered about taking them on. The Government is too scared to take on the ratings agencies. The reply always comes back that there must be confidence. Finance is not poetry, it is not Coleridge, it is not the willing suspension of disbelief, there should be reality behind the money and I want to know what is happening in that little sealed bunker, whether it is in Berlin, Frankfurt or Ballybough. I want to poke my nose into it and find out what is going on.