Absolutely. There has to be order between the parties of Government.

Ulster Bank's announcement of the sale of €900 million worth of loans to vulture funds, including 3,200 family homes with domestic mortgages, is unacceptable and morally bankrupt. The sale is only possible because the Government has given political cover and support to vulture funds. Fine Gael is as responsible for this sale as Ulster Bank. Thousands of Irish families face the potential sale of their loans to a vulture fund and they need and demand urgent action. The reality is that no loan in arrears or otherwise is safe under the current rules.

Sinn Féin's No Consent, No Sale Bill, put forward by Deputy Pearse Doherty, is making its way through the Oireachtas. I believe this Bill is urgently needed as it would ensure that banks cannot sell on loans without the direct consent of the borrower. Given the urgency at hand, will the Taoiseach assure us and ensure that this Bill will progress quickly, that it is not subjected to delay and that it is not frustrated, because those families faced with this Ulster Bank sale and others require protection. I believe that is the least the Taoiseach could afford to those families. It is high time he sided with families as against siding with the vulture funds.

The Deputy is well aware I do not control this House or the other House so I cannot make any commitments when it comes to the passage of legislation or the speed thereof. What I can say is that Ulster Bank, as everyone will know, is not a State-owned bank and is, in fact, a UK-owned bank. It is really important to point out that anyone whose loan is sold on by a bank retains all the contractual rights that are in their contract and all the consumer protections they originally had. It is wrong to scare people and to suggest anything otherwise.

I pay tribute to Mr. David-Maria Sassoli of the socialist and democratic group who was this morning elected President of the European Parliament. In recent days, we have seen a process of nomination of the leadership team for the European Union for the coming years. It obviously involves a lot of seeking of common ground between a variety of groups, geographies, genders, political traditions and so on. I welcome the gender balance of the leadership team. However, I have been very disturbed about how the Taoiseach represented the Government and this country in recent days. He has openly sided with the current leaders of Hungary, Poland and Bulgaria, who have set themselves against liberal democracy. By siding with them, he has reinforced the view that those who stand up for liberal, progressive, European democratic values will be punished. The candidacy of Frans Timmermans for European Commission President was, we are told, and I would be interested in hearing the Taoiseach's view, derailed because he criticised European countries which have undermined the rule of law. Just this morning, we have seen the 200-year-old Hungarian Academy of Sciences, an all-sciences institute, come under the direct political control of a director appointed by Viktor Orbán. Does the Taoiseach believe it is acceptable to punish European leaders who defend European values and is that an acceptable message to give to the people of Europe at this time?

As the Deputy knows, my preferred candidate for the position of European Commission President was Manfred Weber, the candidate of my party, and I fully appreciate that the preferred candidate for Deputy Howlin was Frans Timmermans, the candidate of his party. There is nothing wrong with supporting the candidates of one's own party group, and I would do that, just as Deputy Howlin did. However, neither was able to command a majority, either in the European Parliament or the European Council, so we came up-----

The reason given was that Timmermans-----

I am coming to that. We came up with a compromise candidate, Ursula von der Leyen, the first female head of the European Commission, a really good candidate, a really experienced person, and somebody who comes from my own political family and who is known to many of us in government. The reason Mr. Timmermans did not have majority support in the European Council was that 11 countries did not support his nomination. Three or four did not support it for the reasons Deputy Howlin has outlined but the majority had many other reasons.