Darragh O'Brien (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Fair enough. I believe this Bill would go some way in this regard.

While I acknowledge the Minister of State personally will consider the Bill, I hope Members do not get the usual response. The Minister of State has set aside his script during previous visits to the Seanad. Perhaps he might be willing to accept the Bill on Second Stage to consider any Government amendments that might be required, if the Government believes it cannot accept it. Moreover, rejection should not be solely on the basis that the Government will not accept a Bill that does not emanate from the Government. There are measures that must be taken that will be helped by this Bill. The role of the ECB as the lender of last resort must be formalised. In addition, consideration must be given to sharing the risk associated with emergency lending among all member states and not just the state in which the problems occur. In addition, the quality of the borrowers must be examined. Senator Barrett's Bill would decouple some of the bad practices and would remove some of the potential for such bad practices to happen again. I refer to practices such as leveraging of 45 times current deposits, to which some banks still hold. Consequently, normal depositors and mortgageholders in any bank are at risk from the larger corporate bodies and the executives of those banks again carrying on with reckless lending.