Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

As I listened to the Minister, Deputy Brian Lenihan, I thought that the title of his paper ought to be "More Fairytales from Merrion Street" because the Minister is more "Minister ONAMA" than he is President Obama. He treated us to quotes from President Obama but I remind him that, if he bothered to read the quotes and their context, they were made after President Obama became President and in the context of various large banking institutions such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac already having been taken into public ownership. They were made after AIG, in effect, was taken into public ownership and, moreover, after a large swathe of Wall Street had been forced into mergers or been acquired and various large regional banks in the United States had either, in effect, been taken into public ownership or had been put into forced mergers and acquisitions. When the Minister chooses to quote I wish that he would at least do so in context if we are to have a useful debate in this House.

I wish to call a spade a spade. The Minister read out a page of shame, namely, page 10, which gave a summary position of the book values of loans in the five banks. I will take him through it again. He said it is €24 billion in Allied Irish Banks, €28 billion in Anglo Irish Bank, €16 billion in Bank of Ireland, €1 billion in EBS and €8 billion in Irish Nationwide Building Society. I wish to say to the Minister and his cronies among the bankers and developers and cronies of Fianna Fáil in the toxic triangle that Anglo Irish Bank, €28 billion, and Irish Nationwide Building Society, €8 billion, mean Fingers and Seanie to some of us as we read about their capers in the newspaper.

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