Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Whereas predecessors of different parties saw their role as having a substantial national role above party politics, the Taoiseach has completely rejected this. He has now added to this and become the first Taoiseach of any party to use a Presidency of the EU to play domestic political games. He started this earlier in the year when he travelled to London and delivered a series of partisan speaking points to an academic and business audience. Last week, he went much further and showed that for him electoral politics always come first. The Anglo Irish Bank tapes have rightly caused a public outcry and outrage. When faced with this, the Taoiseach's first and overwhelming instinct was not to address the issue at hand, but to find a way of politicising it. Absolutely nothing in those tapes has implicated any politician in the appalling behaviour they reveal. Yet the Taoiseach decided he needed to start smearing people with crass innuendo and clearly false assertions about what information has been released to the public.

The Taoiseach has repeatedly stated that he knows nothing about what happened when the bank guarantee was brought in. He has said he would love to know what happened.

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