Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael)

-----telling us that this is not bailing out the Fianna Fáil builders, but it is doing so.

A lady and her husband attended my constituency office on Monday. They got a site from their family and had saved €120,000. They wanted €80,000 to finish the house but sought €100,000 because they wanted to decorate it. They went to three banks in my town and not one would give them either amount. They had put €120,000 into the house themselves. They had a site which, at worst, was worth €50,000, giving them a property worth €170,000 and they could not secure €80,000 to complete their house.

We are bailing out bankers and I hope, for the sake of the country, that this works. I have no faith in Fianna Fáil and I have less faith in the Green Party because they have lost their way in office. They did not lose their way today or yesterday but they did so over many months. The people have made up their minds. They want to get rid of Fianna Fáil. They want the party out of government because they are sick and tired of the way they have been treated. They are sick and tired of the way the party has looked after the economy. They are sick and tired of the way Fianna Fáil has looked after its friends in every section of society. They were fixed up in every corner that they could be fixed up and the State can no longer afford to pay them. An bord snip had to be brought in because Ministers did not act the way they should have in government.

As a Front Bench spokesperson for Fine Gael, I ask the Minister and the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and Department of Finance officials to let us know what is the up to date position regarding all the investigations into Anglo Irish Bank, Allied Irish Banks and all the other banks before the legislation is passed. I want that on the record of the House and I want to see people arrested for what they did. Banking is a simple and basic business. Bankers take in and loan out money but they loaned more than they had and they put their own shareholders and the country at risk. We are the laughing stock of Europe and the world because the Minister and his colleagues, including former taoisigh and Minsters for Finance, went out to Europe with their chests out telling their colleagues that we had the best economy in the world. We had so much money we were the most well off people in the world. It was the greatest false economy there ever was and when Deputies Bruton, Burton and others tried to point out and identify what was happening in the real world, nobody in the Government listened.

Have we qualified people in the Department of Finance? Are they qualified in commerce? Do they really know what is going on in the world? Why could the Central Bank, the Financial Regulator and the Department of Finance not see between them that our banking institutions would bring the country down? They did nothing about it. The country could collapse and I do not want that to happen. Some banks do not have a penny to lend and yet again hard pressed taxpayers are keeping bankers in their jobs. Some taxpayers could lose their jobs while others will have to take a reduction in their wages and work harder than ever.

Nothing will have changed in five years time if NAMA works. Another Government could be before the House in ten or 15 years bailing the same bankers out because we did not learn. I would love to say the banks should be nationalised but while I would love to see them be allowed to collapse, that would damage the country. However, I want to see some of the people in Anglo Irish Bank jailed for the activities that took place. They were supported by Fianna Fáil and Ministers and I want these people to be named and shamed. Who drew down loans from these banks? It was a scandal. I have learned one thing since I entered politics, which is that there are two laws in the country. There is one for the poor and one for the rich. When I was elected to the Dáil many years ago, a man pulled me aside on the street. He said, "You'll learn one thing, sonny, when you go into the Dáil. It doesn't matter whether you are Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil. When it comes to the rich, the poor will pay and the rich will always look after the rich". That is what is happening. The poor of this country will have to bail out the rich. Developers have put their property into the names of their wives or children or have put it outside the State and I am glad the Minister for Finance said it can be taken off them and the taxpayer will not be paying for their bad loans while they save their good properties.

I want the banks dealt with. I want some action in the Department of Finance. The regulator should have been sacked a long ago while the Central Bank failed to do its job.

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