Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We want the banking inquiry to work. If the Sinn Féin member of that committee goes in with that sort of attitude, he or she would be far better off the committee. I might not agree with everything that Senator Ó Domhnaill said, in particular when he said the inquiry will have no teeth. The inquiry has teeth. I would love if it had more teeth. If the referendum had been passed in 2011, the committee would have had real teeth. We had to re-examine how we would conduct an inquiry and introduced a Bill last year to set up this committee of inquiry.

I hope this committee will sit as soon as possible. There will be a scoping exercise for a number of months and then it can commit to hearings in September or October 2014. I hope the committee will get all it requires from the Oireachtas. I thank the officials for the work they have carried out in drawing up the Standing Orders of this committee. We need to ensure that the committee will have the legal and other resources to ensure it can carry out the work in a professional manner.

We have a history when a committee carried out similar work to what is proposed in the banking inquiry. The DIRT inquiry was a very successful exercise. From the evidence of the way the committees carry out their work, I believe that committees are better resourced now than they were in the past and they are able to do much more work. I believe this is a start of what may be termed investigatory work by committees.

I thank the Members for their contributions and I wish the committee the best of luck.