Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I join with Senator Bacik in paying tribute to Brian Farrell. He brought the broadcasting of political events in this country to new heights. He will be missed but will live on through some splendid books.

I welcome the proposals from the governor of the Bank of England and the chairman of the UK Financial Stability Board for a common international standard for the loss-absorbing capacity of global systemic banks. Under these proposals, creditors would become shareholders. It goes to the G10 in Brisbane in the new year.

Perhaps Ireland might support those proposals through our membership of the European Union.
I also thank the Leader for taking the decision made in the Order of Business last week about postcodes. It was announced yesterday that the postcode system is not to proceed until the concerns of the Data Protection Commissioner have been addressed. As I told the House last week, the Joint Committee on Transport and Communications was very strongly lobbied by the Freight Transport Association, which argued that it should "forestall the spending of public monies on another ill-thought and poorly executed project". We have the technology to read letters now. The system knows where Mayo is without a seven-digit code and it will not send the Bohola post to Ballina.
Further, in one of a number of articles on this issue published yesterday, Mr. Joe Leogue of the Irish Examinerstated that a firm from Cork was prevented from bidding for the contract for the system that we are now questioning, because its turnover was under €40 million. We are supposed to be trying to develop small and medium enterprises.
I do not know whether the postcodes were ever a good idea. We raised it here and I think the Minister for Communications, Transport and Natural Resources, Deputy Alex White, has taken some of our concerns on board. I welcome that very much, as another tribute by the Minister to the work of the Seanad. We must have a debate on the remaining issues, but Deputy White made the correct decision to wait to see whether the concerns of the Data Protection Commissioner can be addressed before we proceed.