The Leader has made a sensible suggestion for dealing with the Health (Amendment) Bill and we would have no difficulty with taking Committee and Remaining Stages today.

I agree with the Leader. All of us are absolutely disgusted and horrified by what we heard in the recent revelations. I will not comment further on them for the very reason the Leader mentioned because we all need to be careful with regard to how future investigations are carried out. While Senator Gilroy might have a problem with this, I remember previous cases where utterances were made in the Oireachtas-----

We were not in government.

----- that prejudiced subsequent court cases. We need to be aware that there are ongoing investigations by the Garda, the Director of Corporate Enforcement and the Financial Regulator. While they are very important, we all agree that the public deserve answers.

I heard the Minister, Deputy Howlin, speak on the radio this morning. It is important that whatever investigation is established is robust and has the proper terms of reference to deal with this. We will need to discuss how that can best be done, whether it is through an Oireachtas committee or a commission of investigation. However, we need to have powers to be able to come to conclusions on this matter. This will certainly play out in the coming days. All of us are disgusted with it and the citizens deserve answers in this regard. It will move on in the next few days and I encourage the Government to establish as speedily as possible the banking inquiry in whatever guise is best to get the results and the answers we require.

I welcome the reversal of the cut in resource hours that was announced three weeks ago by the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Quinn. The additional 12% cut in resource teaching hours has been overturned. I was interested to note that one could overturn a cut that apparently was not actually a cut in the first place because the Government argued at the time that this was not a cut. However, what is important is that the children who require these extra resource-teaching hours will get them. I bring to colleagues' attention that the Minister has not reversed the cuts to the special needs assistants. I welcome that the Minister was able to go to Cabinet and find the additional moneys to ensure that resource hours were given to children who need them. However, some 22,000 children have special needs assistants. That figure has increased from 20,000 last year.

That cut has not been reversed. I encourage the Minister, Deputy Quinn, to ensure that children with special needs, who often have distinct and difficult learning disabilities, are not affected. While I welcome the reversal of part of this cut, which is important, I ask colleagues opposite to examine the detail of it because the cut to special needs assistants' hours has not been reversed, and that must happen. The Seanad played a role in this. We raised it here first on the Order of Business last Tuesday.

Hear, hear.

It was raised by a number of colleagues on all sides of the House, including Senator Mary Ann O'Brien and many others. This is too important an issue to let go. The Minister should go further and ensure that the cuts to special needs assistants' hours are also reversed.

I thank the Leader for anticipating that a great deal of concern and anger would be expressed today on the floor of the House at the revelations contained in the tapes that have been broadcast which came into the possession of the Irish Independent concerning the executives of Anglo Irish Bank. We would all share the grave concern and anger that everyone is feeling on hearing the content of those tapes but I think we all agree that it is imperative that there is a robust inquiry into the background to the tapes and the events around the tapes. It assists us now in knowing that these tapes exist and that there is this method of establishing, to a greater degree of certainty, what was really going on around the events of the dreadful bank guarantee in September 2008. If there is any positive to be taken from this it is that we may have greater assistance and there may be more objective material available to assist in proving what happened than we had previously thought. That is a positive. It is not only a robust civil inquiry we require of whatever type, be it a commission of inquiry or an Oireachtas inquiry. It is also important that the Garda and the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement are given every resource necessary to enable them investigate any criminal offences that may have been committed.

I welcome the announcement today by the Minister, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, that the level of resource teachers available to students with special educational needs will be retained at 2012-13 levels. It is a good day for special education, which is an area the Labour Party has passionately defended since coming into office. It is welcome that the Minister, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, has today secured Cabinet agreement to release 500 additional teaching posts to schools this September to cope with the unpredicted rise in the demand for these resources. I know he fought at Cabinet to ring-fence the spending in this area in line with his, and the Labour Party's, long-standing commitment. However, he is also setting up a review, and that is important, as to the reason the rise in demand for special needs resources of 12% is so much greater than the rise in the school population of 1.3%. The review group is to report in a timely fashion in September, and that will be very useful to us in terms of allocation of future resources.

I ask the Leader for a debate on patronage and on increased provision of multidenominational schooling. I know others have called for that previously, and that we have had some debate on this. In that context I want to welcome the announcement by the Minister, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, of a premises for the Portobello Educate Together national school, a new multidenominational school opening in the Dublin 8 area. I have been very involved with that. I am chair of the interim board, and we are delighted that we have a premises secured at Harcourt Terrace for that school.