Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I say this directly to AIB: Let us not have a token reduction here. Tracker mortgages are on 1%, yet the variable mortgage rate with AIB and its competitor banks is around 4.25%. Any suggestion they are going to tinker with that variable rate in order to placate mounting public anger towards the banks with a nominal reduction of 0.25% is totally unacceptable. I charge the banks, and particularly AIB if it is going to lead on this, to make a significant reduction.

I am sure the House will join with me in remembering the estimated 4,000 Irish men who died at the tragedy of Gallipoli on 25 April, 1915. It was the first day of the landings. An estimated 70,000 Turkish troops were also killed in that awful tragedy of the First World War. Those 4,000 soldiers from all over Ireland, representing the various regiments of the time like the Munsters, the Dublin Fusiliers and, in my own part of the country, the Connaught Rangers, were led "by donkeys", as was subsequently commented. This was to be the most tragic of battles of the First World War. There are still families mourning their grandfathers, grand-uncles and other relations. I hope the House would remember 25 April as a day of infamy where 4,000 Irish men, hoping they were fighting for the freedom of their own country, gave their lives in the most senseless bloodletting of the First World War. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a n-anamacha dílise.