Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)

I feel sorry for the Member opposite. He and his colleagues having laboured so long with the reins of power in their hands, he has suddenly had a Damascus-like conversion and he is looking across at where he used to be seated and asking himself, why are things not like they were? I am beginning to be concerned that perhaps he is hallucinatory. Perhaps more than one Member opposite has been growing certain vegetables in the garden or elsewhere. I am truly amazed that anybody that represented the Government for the past 15 years, including up to the last four weeks of its term in office, could have the neck to come into the House and make the kind of sweeping statements we have heard from the Deputy in recent times. It took the Deputy's party 15 years to bury the country up to ears in debt and not only country but the banking institutions, the mortgage holders, and those in trade and industry, with the consequent loss of jobs. The country has been sunk up to its ears.

There was an interesting television programme last night which gave a fair evaluation of the sequence of events. Many of the participants contributed and it was very enlightening, although the analysis was retrospective. Some who thought this crisis would happen ten years ago were scoffed at and where do we find ourselves now? This is the reality.

We are in deep trouble. We are now between a rock and a hard place and all the rhetoric in the world will not change that. It will be down to ourselves, our resilience, determination, capabilities and our seriousness as a population as to whether we will be able to survive this crisis. It will not be easy. There is no sense in asking why the Government is not doing more about it? The Government was handed this chalice, which it will deal with.

The Minister's speech this morning and the banking strategy recently announced will set the cornerstone and foundation for what has to be done. I know full well that the people sitting opposite may well say that they could not do it. They could not do it because the credibility of this country in the international arena had vanished. Four years ago a diplomatic initiative should have been undertaken. The former Government should have gone to various member state parliaments and explained to the people what was happening here so that they would know that this country was about to take steps that would restore public confidence and international confidence, regenerate the economy and create jobs, but that was not done. All that has happened is that we have been allowed to dwindle and swing in the wind, as it were, to such an extent that nobody throughout Europe likes us any more as a nation. That is an appalling development, but that is the way it is.

We can talk about burning bondholders as much as we like but there will need to be recognition among our European colleagues that at some stage when we show that we can do it ourselves, we expect to be helped along the way as well. If anybody thinks that will change, it will not. Many of us, when we were on the opposite side of the House, said that changes would have to be made, that they would be difficult but there would need to be recognition among those from whom we are now about to borrow that we cannot do it all in one fell swoop.

There is no good talking about Iceland and saying what the people did there or what the Greeks did. We are here and we are in a different situation. Our banking system has to function again at all costs. If it does not work, then all the salaries of all the Members will disappear just as information is lost when a PC crashes. In the same way, the wages and salaries of every civil and public servant in the country will disappear overnight unless we restore confidence in the banking system and produce something so that commentators internationally recognise that we mean what we are at.

If we take the other route and say we are not to pay back the bondholders what we borrowed from them already and that we want more money off them next week, that sounds good, but it does not work. There is no sense in what the previous Government said - that it told us this beforehand. It did not tell us in time. The time to deal with all this was 2002 and 2003. That is when the issue should have been dealt with.

It was also when the appropriate measures should have been taken and when successive Ministers for Finance should have put in place the kind of restrictions that would have stopped the economy from overheating. However, this was not done. Anyone who stated that it should have been done was scoffed at.

I am a humble Member of the House who has no influence whatsoever.

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