Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I again welcome the Minister. I commend him on the Bill. At this time of year we remember the late former Minister of State, Shane McEntee. I also commend Senator Darragh O'Brien and others who have worked on this problem.

I have all the reservations Senator Hayden has just expressed. There is a repeated trail of people coming into this House visiting their failures on taxpayers and on the Houses of the Oireachtas; the taxpayer always loses. The industry will not pay in this case and the insurance proved to be useless. That is in a queue behind banks, insurance companies, credit unions and pension funds, all of which in the recent past have been looking for dig-outs, bailouts and so on. As the Taoiseach said last night, we have put the taxpayers to the pin of their collars. We need to design tort law so that people pay up when they cause these problems because otherwise we will have a real moral hazard problem. They will never reform if they always roll over the Government and the Houses of the Oireachtas, and get away with their misdemeanours. The Minister should get together with the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Shatter, to see if we could design laws to ensure that those responsible pay the bill.

It is interesting that in other countries, people who commit financial misdemeanours pay and go to prison. If Forbesmagazine gave Ireland that prize for protecting investors so much, it might be a prize we do not want. It is about time taxpayers were protected against inefficient people in the real economy. However, that issue is for another day. The Minister has stepped into the breach in succession to the former Minister of State, Shane McEntee, who took this issue very much to his heart and I support this Bill. The next stage must be to find out a way to get those who actually cause these problems finally to stump up some of the bill and not to keep sending it to the Minister and his Department.