Order of Business - 18th November 2008

Order of Business - 18th November 2008
Senator David Norris: Can the Leader request the Minister for Transport to come to the
House to explain the visa waiver scheme and his discussions with Mr. Michael Chertoff?
According to this morning’s edition of The Irish Times, he will be required to transmit information
about Irish citizens, including fingerprints, information about their religious views, sexual
orientation and so on. It did not say that this was confined to members of the criminal
class. The sharing of information on the fingerprints of criminals is reasonable and legitimate,
but I cannot think why religious views or sexual orientation should be made available to the
United States Government, which has a notorious record in maintaining these things privately.
Mr. Ganley of Libertas was before an Oireachtas committee today. I will be very interested
to read the transcripts and see if he was probed about associations with the American defence
establishment that have been widely suggested in the newspapers. If he was, this might well
explain some of his opposition to the Lisbon treaty. It would also confirm me in my view about
the increasing militarisation proposed under the treaty. I repeatedly asked in this House about
the status of the European armaments group, which was renamed the European Defence
Agency and which for the first time is statutorily included in the architecture of the European
Union under this treaty, but I failed to get any answer to it. The American arms industry would
not welcome the establishment of a concentrated and effective European munitions industry
with a strong export potential, which has been envisaged. If this continues in the Lisbon treaty,
I will very reluctantly have to campaign against the second referendum.
We have raised the issue of management committees on this side of the House many times
and I am glad to see the Government is now coming on board. One of the sinister things that
could perhaps be addressed by legislation is that developers can refuse to hand over to a
democratically elected tenants’ management committee as long as they retain one unsold unit.
They regularly do this so that they can hand out contracts to their friends and charge whatever
they like. This is something about which we should legitimately be worried.
Although the issue of the banks has been widely discussed, we are due another debate on
that. Bank of Ireland shares have collapsed and are below \1, while a year ago they were valued
at \18. What about the people who have invested their life savings in this? I was chairman of
the board of a number of charitable companies. I received nothing from them but I made very
sure that I did not trade recklessly. That is an offence under law. These people clearly traded
recklessly but what is happening to them? If we are going to capitalise, will we give them more
money and leave them there? I certainly would not be happy handing out money to capitalise
people who obviously traded recklessly in the past.