John Kelly (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I support everything Senator Landy has said about banks and bank charges. It seems that cartelism is rife in this country, certainly within the banking sector. Oil prices are down at present but in some towns, petrol stations are selling diesel at €1.15 a litre and the competing petrol station is selling it at €1.16 a litre while in another town it costs €1.24 a litre and €1.25 a litre. They are all sticking together within their communities. What Senator Landy says is quite true.

I support Senator Whelan's points about the library services. I have concerns about the future of the library services. Civil servants are driving everything in this country. They come up with catchy phrases every so often. I refer to the document called Shared Services. In my opinion, shared services means reduced services. They have produced another document about the fire service called Keeping Communities Safe. The fire service offers an excellent service, and yet keeping communities safe means that the number of firemen on fire and accident call-out is reduced. I am very concerned for the future of all our services. For instance, there is talk of having staffless libraries whereby customers access the library by means of a key card. I can imagine how that might work in an instance where an elderly person goes into a library at midnight that is operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week and where another person decides to follow her into the library and mug her. Has anyone given thought to such a possibility? I was talking to Senator Whelan and he is correct in his observation that a library is not just about books but for the civil servants it is about balancing the books. We should have a broad debate on all of these issues before decisions are made.