Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

The Bill also covers the credit unions. Given the importance of the credit unions in the fabric of Irish community, social, family and business life I am disappointed that the Minister has not explained the implications for the credit union movement of its inclusion in the Bill. I made recommendations to the Minister in a previous debate, which he promised to consider, regarding proper consultation with the credit union movement but the movement has been simply thrown in again.

I read with interest the cables released on Wikileaks yesterday. It is fascinating to read the conversations set down between the United States Embassy and various officials with staff in the Department of Finance, the Central Bank and the Financial Regulator at the time of the guarantee. They guessed impaired assets to be between 0.5% and 0.8%. They had favourable impressions to the effect that the banks were not in much difficulty at all.

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