Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I note that in the Financial Times today there is an article by the associate editor, Mr. John Gapper, which states:

This week brought two announcements that strike at the distortions caused to banking by cheap credit and the underpricing of risk over past decades. One was the US Federal Reserve's decision to implement the Basel III capital rules, and to add extra measures. The other was the European Commission's assault on how banks trade credit derivatives.

He concludes: "It was never going to be easy to reform bad banking habits acquired over decades but, several years after the crash, banks are facing the inevitable regulatory reckoning". We have to be alert to these developments and, as we had a bigger banking problem than anybody else, more resolute.

In this House the issue of the tapes was raised. I commend the Minister for Finance, Michael Deputy Noonan, and Deputy Pearse Doherty for pursuing the issue and hope we can get all of them. Parliament will have to take on this task, as the Leader commented yesterday. We did not get a sense of urgency in the legislation we discussed during the week, but I commend both the Minister and Deputy Pearse Doherty for pursuing the issue of the tapes and trying to discover where they have been for the past three years and why they have not been available.

I commend the Minister of State, Deputy Tom Hayes - or the other Mr. Hayes, as we will have to call him as we now have two Ministers of State with the name Hayes - for the strength of the debate here yesterday and accepting in principle the Food Provenance Bill proposed by Senator Feargal Quinn. His prepared script was leading him to take the opposite point of view. This is not the first time it has happened that the Civil Service has prepared scripts against Bills prepared by Members of this House. The usual recipe is that it is not constitutional and that it would have-----