I will preface my request for an amendment to the Order of Business that the Minister for Finance come to the House today and outline not only the timing but the terms of reference of the clearly much-needed banking inquiry, by reminding colleagues of one or two facts. Recently we spoke about drugs for malignant melanoma and we estimated treating every patient in the country would cost €3 million or €4 million. Senator Mary Ann O'Brien has just spoken about the national children's hospital, the cost of which is estimated to be approximately €700 million. The cost of running St. Vincent's Hospital for one year is approximately €170 million. Every day for the next five years, if the repayments are amortised over that period, we will pay €30 million a day in compensation for the obligations we assumed with the bank debts. This equates to €600,000 or €700,000 an hour. One can do the arithmetic oneself. We could buy the drug for everybody who requires it for melanoma every day for the next five years with one day of the expenditure we pay on the bank. We would pay for the cost of the national children's hospital with three weeks of repayments. We all know this and I am probably not being very original when I say it but it is important that while everybody is very fixed on outrage, justice and, perhaps, revenge, people must understand the consequences of the bank problem are real, palpable and affect many people throughout the country. I am not even speaking about the social welfare implications, lost lives, emigration or lost businesses.

Does the Senator have a question for the Leader?

I have called for a debate today. I compliment good Leitrim man Paul Williams for unearthing the story. Why did it take five years?

Hear, hear.

If everybody knew these tapes exist why did it take five years? We heard statements from senior Government officials stating they did not even know the tapes existed. We need an inquiry. The reason for my typical quixotic tilting at windmills attempt to have a debate on the subject today is not because I am fixated on the punishment. People may have to be offered degrees of immunity from certain aspects of the consequences of prosecution to get to the bottom of the story.

There is a much more important thing we need to do. We need to work out how we can lessen the harm that has been occasioned by this. I am told by people who know much more about economics than I do, and basically we are a nation of expert economists at this stage, that we cannot actually get the money back. That said, are we in a position to use it as a moral negotiating tool when asking the ESM to look at the interest rate it is charging us, which is costing us millions per week, for the recapitalisation of our banks retrospectively. The question we must ask is-----

Those are points the Senator can make during the debate. I call Senator Burke.

-----if we have an inquiry, whether we can subpoena Mr. Trichet and the members of the European Central Bank? Can we get the equivalent of a freedom of information request to the ECB to get all of their documents because we need to know what they knew about the true state of the Irish banks and whether they brought pressure to bear on our Minister and Government at the time to undertake a guarantee which they knew and we did not know was going to handicap us for between 30 to 50 years. For that reason, I am asking that we amend the Order of Business and ask the Minister for Finance to come to this House. I will be pressing that.