Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I know my colleagues on the right will welcome the Minister, Deputy Regina Doherty, coming into the House to tease out some of the issues around JobPath and to evaluate whether the €350 million being spent on it and the €17 million that was spent on it last year is justified. I look forward to that debate and I hope it happens sooner rather than later.

A word that I know this week which I did not know last week is "admonish". Now we know what admonish means thanks to the Minister for Finance. I have followed this as a member of the finance committee, where we have worked together on the matter. We now know that admonish means to smack on the wrist, or a wag of the finger, and it also means to maintain the status quo. It means that one will not be given any more sweets until one has tidied up the house a bit.

As a member of the finance committee, I am greatly disappointed in the Minister for Finance's response to the banks. The banks were already scheduled to be here, these were not special appointments and while the tracker mortgage issue was the most serious matter to be discussed, I cannot see where anything has shifted from the presentations which the banks made to the finance committee and those made yesterday. That concerns me a great deal in relation to the banks' intentions to clean up their act and compensate people in the manner necessary for what was done to them.

The finance committee will continue that work and I look forward to the banks coming in again in early January and to the Minister of Finance coming into this House to explain what he means by "admonish". Hopefully that will happen sooner rather than later.