Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)

This comes from a former Minister for Finance. To claim international investment agencies, which made decisions in 2010 to withdraw more than €100 billion in deposits from Irish banks, did so because Pearse Doherty stood up in this House calling for burden sharing, or because Constantin Gurdgiev or other economists or Nobel Prize holders said there should be burden sharing for senior bond holders, is absolutely ludicrous. These people make hard-nosed decisions on investments. Some of the investments are governed by strict criteria in terms of ratings, debt in banks and sovereign debt. One may believe this debate has gone on as a result of where we are at or that this has added to it, but the reality is the economic treason which we all know has happened took place as a result of Lenihan and others sitting on those benches.

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