SEANAD REPORTMEMBERS SHOULD be panicking over the "mother of all financial crises," the likes of which had not been seen since 1929, said Shane Ross (Ind).
Urging that the Minister for Finance be asked to address the House on what the Government was doing about the crisis, he said a great many ordinary people were walking the streets wondering how it would impact on them.
But the Government was "keeping its head in the sand, saying: 'don't worry, don't panic.' I think they are wrong. I think we should be panicking. This is a time for panic."
Mr Ross said the stock market in Ireland was down 40 per cent and people were worried that they would not get pensions at all. They were wrong, but they were worried about it.
He said he would beg Seanad leader Donie Cassidy to ask Brian Cowen to come to the House and give people the sort of assurances they needed "because they feel helpless in this situation".
Mr Cassidy said he appreciated Senator Ross bringing this matter to the attention of the House.
"This is a very serious challenge that is going to last for quite a while." He would suggest to the Minister for Finance that there was a need for an urgent debate to update the House at the earliest opportunity.
The debate in the Council of Europe on the greater availability of abortion had no relevance to the constitutional position here, said Terry Leyden (FF).
He believed that an article in The Irish Times yesterday could cause damage in the lead-up to the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
At a meeting in Paris this week, he had fully laid out our position vis-a-vis our Constitution, which had a full prohibition on abortion and would continue to have that.
Mr Leyden stressed that a report to be debated by the council next month had been presented by an individual member of the Austrian parliament. This was a Council of Europe debate. "It is not a European Union debate, and it has no jurisdiction as far as we are concerned."