Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

I have listened with great interest to what Opposition and Government Members have said and I stand somewhere between the two arguments put forward. I fully agree that the only way we can get out of our difficulties is by achieving economic growth and an increase in employment. However, the sources of the finance often suggested by Sinn Féin are based more on rhetoric and misinformation than on detailed analysis. For example, a Sinn Féin Deputy stated that money from the National Pensions Reserve Fund was going into Anglo Irish Bank. That is not a fact. The NPRF can invest only where it can achieve a return and the banks in which it invested were AIB and the Bank of Ireland because they were believed to have a future. If the money had not been provided from that source, it would have had to be found somewhere else.

The NPRF has been useful in dealing with a variety of issues and it is important it is used to our best advantage. The reason it is investing in the banks is that the Government intends to establish two banking pillars. By putting money in these two amalgamated institutions, the hope is that they will become viable banks which can lend to industry and commerce. The alternative is to put the same money in a separate vehicle to lend it directly but one then faces the problem of a non-functioning banking sector which cannot obtain the necessary finance. What cannot be done is give the money to one group and invest it somewhere else on the pretence that it was not already spent, which is the kind of economics practised by Members of the Government while they were in Opposition. They advocated all sorts of programmes and sources of finance. The Labour Party proposed to establish an investment bank but did not tell us where it would find the money.

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