I am sure the Minister appreciates how sickened people are by what are called "the vampire tapes". Does she appreciate that the questions people are asking do not really relate to who said what to whom, or to whether politicians were just incompetent or incompetent and corrupt? They are asking what the Government intends to do about it. To be honest, slagging Fianna Fáil and waffling on as the Taoiseach did here for the past two days does not really cut it.

The Minister might be interested to know that 26 members of the Czech Republic Parliament are in custody at the moment for crimes of a less serious character than what went on in Ireland five years ago. Five years ago, the banking crime of the century - the theft of billions from men, women and children in this country - took place, and nothing has been done.

The Taoiseach told us yesterday that it takes time and that we are preparing a book of evidence, the exact same line that was given two years after the crisis. It is utter nonsense. What other crime would be treated in this way? Where is the fraud squad? Where is the Criminal Assets Bureau? This is what they were set up for. Any other crime scene would have been surrounded and the evidence taken. It was six months before the Garda made a visit to Anglo Irish Bank and two years before it even got the passwords to its computers.

The reason it is different is that there is a different attitude to crimes committed by people in suits. They are not considered to be real crimes. Also, of course, there was a fear that if the Garda had gone in, a connection to the political establishment might have been revealed. Now, we are expected to believe that a newspaper whose owner this time last year took Seán Fitzpatrick to the European Championships and then quashed the printing of those photographs is at the forefront of investigative journalism. We are expected to believe that the Garda Commissioner, who we know has a legal responsibility under the Garda Síochána Act to inform the Minister of serious matters of public interest, did not inform the Minister about these very serious tapes, yet they ended up in the hands of one of the Garda's favourite sources of information.

The greatest challenge is that we are expected to believe there is something unusual here. There is nothing unusual here.

Will you put your question, please, Deputy?

The only thing that is unusual is the scale of the arrogance, the scale of the delays and the scale of the inaction. I want to ask the Minister two questions. These are crimes. Why are the people who committed them not in jail? If the Minister, who is in power, says our laws are inadequate, what is she doing about them?

We have heard a lot from the Labour Party about how it did not vote for the bank guarantee. It voted for every other cut to pay for it. There is €25 billion in bonds in the Central Bank-----

Deputy, will you please resume your seat?

-----to cover the promissory notes on behalf of the Government. We know that once they are issued, this becomes sovereign debt. Given that-----

Deputy, please.

-----it has been revealed that this decision was made on misinformation, will the Government now commit to cancelling and not paying those bonds? It should not make the Irish people pay for the crimes of others.

I want to be quite clear. We have now got into a habit. It is nearly 11.05 a.m. There are two minutes to ask a question and three minutes to answer, with one minute for a supplementary question. I am going to start sticking to that rigidly. I will switch off the microphones if Members do not adhere to the rules.

On both sides.

On both sides, yes.

Tell the Taoiseach that.

Will you please adhere to the rules? The Minister has three minutes to reply.

The Labour Party is heckling.

I will chair the House, if Deputy McGrath does not mind.

First, in view of what happened on a previous occasion, we all have to be very circumspect in what we say here in regard to matters that are due, I understand and I hope, to come before the courts early next year. It is right and proper that people who have been involved in what has happened to this country - this major disaster - should come before our courts. However, I do not think anything should be said here that would jeopardise the courts' ability to deal in the proper way with these matters.

Second, in regard to the tapes that have now been released, we have legislation before the Dáil as we speak which concerns the powers of the Oireachtas to carry out investigations. We have had no less than four scoping inquiries. The first was by Klaus Regling, the second was by Governor Patrick Honohan and the third was by Peter Nyberg, and we also had a fourth inquiry into the functioning of the upper echelons of the public service in the context of the events that took place, which was carried out by experts from Canada. We have had a great deal of inquiry and investigation into what happened. What is important is that we should be able, with all of the material that is available, to proceed to an appropriate inquiry.

With regard to arraignments before the courts, obviously, the operation of the justice system and the prosecutorial system in Ireland is properly independent of the Government of the day. However, I can say to the Deputy that the Garda and the prosecution authorities have, via the Attorney General and the Minister for Justice and Equality, indicated that it is expected that the prosecutions will be under way in court in the new year.

The Minister's point about due process or the system being potentially tainted is utter nonsense. There are facts here. Laws were broken, this criminal activity happened and those who were responsible for it have not been brought to book. I do not believe the people out there are interested in Oireachtas inquiries. The critical thing they are interested in is that those responsible be brought to account, and, more important, that everybody else who is paying the price for their crimes be released from that life sentence.

Will you put your question, please, Deputy?

The Minister, unlike in the past when she was in opposition, has an opportunity to do that now. Why is she asking - forcing - the Irish people to pay for the crimes of these bankers while they walk free? The Government has the power to the cancel the bonds that are under the Central Bank. Let the ECB take a hit rather than special needs assistants, parents and mortgage holders. The choice is now with the Government. Harking back to the past will not cover it on this one.

For the record, there have been a number of occasions on which comments were made in the House by previous officeholders which seriously jeopardised, if not totally prevented, prosecutions that might otherwise have been undertaken. It is important that the Deputy acknowledge that there is an independent justice system, an independent Judiciary and an independent prosecution system.

With regard to what I said in opposition, because I am very clear about what I said in opposition, I said that the arrangements that were made would have to be renegotiated. I specifically set out how the promissory note and the other arrangements could be renegotiated. Unfortunately, once a guarantee is given by a sovereign, unless the sovereign totally defaults, there is no way of repudiating a guarantee.

Of course there is.

Is Deputy Daly suggesting that this country should have defaulted and been plunged into totally penury? If that is her solution, it is not an opinion I share.