Darragh O'Brien (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his contribution. I believe I speak for most people when I say the manner in which this Bill has been brought to the Oireachtas is wholly unacceptable. It is akin to asking people to bet on the blind. I was in the Dáil Chamber for the Minister's speech, to which I listened with great intent, and where my party colleagues outlined a number of specific queries. What the Seanad is being asked to do is to ratify the legislation outside the context of the overall deal the Minister intends to achieve, I hope, tomorrow. Fianna Fáil has always wished the Minister and the Government the best in their endeavours to secure a better deal. However, we have an issue with the way this is being done. I have previous experience of late night-early morning sittings and the outcome of such sittings in 2008 and 2010 has been discussed since. Personally, I have an issue with rushed legislation. Will the Minister clarify for how long this legislation has been prepared? I understand the Bills Office works extremely hard and that it has produced a Bill and an explanatory memorandum very quickly. However, it is important that Senators know that the Bill has been subjected to the correct checks and balances because I have no doubt it will be challenged in the courts. I hope the Minister will answer this question for us.

The Minister has been working hard to secure a better deal for the country, but, as public representatives and Members of the Oireachtas, all we know about the make-up of the proposed deal is what we hear, be it in whispers on the corridor or from the media, about how the promissory notes will be dealt with, how they will be transferred to NAMA, whether they will become a full part of the sovereign debt, the type of payments we will make and for how long we will make them. The Minister must agree that it is not ideal for us to be debating the Bill in the early hours of the morning in the absence of any detail of how it will affect the country. However, I take his word that he has, effectively, been bounced into doing this because of the leaks that occurred concerning the plans of the Government to liquidate the IBRC. I welcome these plans. Any of us who has been in politics in recent years - I have only been involved since 2007 - will welcome seeing the back of the IBRC or what was formerly Anglo Irish Bank. As my colleague in the Dáil, Deputy Michael McGrath, said, this is only a technical liquidation and the assets held by Anglo Irish Bank and the IBRC will now be transferred to NAMA. Therefore, it is important that the Minister give us a better indication of what is on the table. I understand he cannot go into great detail, but we must know what we are signing up to before we support the legislation. It is wholly unsatisfactory that we do not know.

The Minister has expanded on the explanation he gave in the Dáil of the real risk with regard to the ¤12 billion to ¤14 billion worth of assets remaining in the IBRC, which I welcome. He has mentioned that he believes no developer will ever make a repayment on a loan to the IBRC while the bank is in limbo. I agree with him. However, how realisable are these assets? Would there, as suggested by some of the Minister's colleagues, have been a run on them, causing the State to lose out on their value? I ask the Minister to expand on this, if possible.

Fianna Fáil supported the Bill in the Dáil, indicating that, on balance, the Government could be trusted on this issue. However, it is important that the Minister give us some indication of what the ECB plans to accept and whether that will be announced to both Houses tomorrow? Is an announcement imminent? Many of those to whom I have been talking are very concerned about the fact that the legislation has been introduced so quickly, without a detailed explanation being given as to why this must happen. All of us welcome the liquidation of the IBRC and, obviously, the staff and those who have been working in the organisation, particularly its front-line staff, will take some solace from the Minister's statement that they will be offered jobs in and transfer to NAMA.

I do not like what we are doing here. As legislators, we should have more information than what either House has received. I listened intently to the Minister in the Dáil and the contributions of other spokespersons. I acknowledge that while the Minister is engaged in detailed negotiations, he cannot tell us everything. However, I am not satisfied as to why he and the Government considered it necessary to bring forward the Bill in such a short space of time or why it was necessary to bring it to the Seanad directly after being voted on in the Dáil, without knowing what the implications will be. As I said, on balance, Fianna Fáil supported the Bill in the Dáil because it supports the Government's efforts to secure a better deal for the country. The Minister had acknowledged it previously, but the Taoiseach acknowledged for the first time in the Seanad last July that the previous Government had had no other option but to do as it did, as there were no European mechanisms in place for us to deal with the banking problem which was not purely an Irish banking problem. As Deputy Michael McGrath said in the Dáil, we have passed the European treaty, but the new mechanisms available to countries encountering banking difficulties are not available to us. As a result, we still do not know how our retrospective banking debt will be dealt with. That is the reason, following the debate in the Dáil and this debate in the Seanad, we must make a call on whether, on balance, we should agree to the passing of this legislation. However, this is wholly unsatisfactory and many of the people to whom I have spoken in the past few hours are very uneasy about it, more than likely because of their experience of late night or early morning sittings to pass legislation.

I ask the Minister to expand further on the few questions I have put to him so as to provide comfort that the Bill will stand up to legal scrutiny. Will he also outline, in as much detail as possible, the prospective deal about which we expect to hear tomorrow? I would rather hear about it in the Oireachtas than on "Morning Ireland".