Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

Crucially, such an approach would not have provided what following a NAMA approach has done, namely, a clear, independent, thorough, rigorous and in many ways ruthless assessment of the extent of the problem and the scale of the losses. That will be important when emerging from this situation, because as horrible and difficult as are these losses, I prefer to know what they are rather than not knowing or having them hidden within a nationalised institution or under an insurance premium taken out by the Government that would have gone on forever and a day. It is better to have a sense of the scale of the problem, horrific as it is, than otherwise.

As for the approach taken, some of the international literature on what happens in such banking crises - this is a common phenomenon - shows the capitalist system does not work well in asset markets. Almost invariably, there is a sense that markets in goods and services are quite stable but markets in assets appear to be fundamentally unstable. They are subject to human failings in respect of overvaluing, hyping up and then getting caught in a bubble.

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