Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is not about egos. I want to forget about the partisan politics of the past. Let us all forget about it; the matter is too serious to do otherwise.

Tomorrow and Friday the big artillery will be needed at the European Council. That is where we will need to give barrels of information and truth to Mrs. Merkel, Mr. Schäuble and Mr. Weidmann, the president of the Deutsche Bundesbank. They are backtracking at a rate of knots that is frightening and dangerous, not only for us but also for the eurozone as a whole. They are playing with fire and do not really understand the problem. Eminent financial figures who understand the financial system, not just economists, know how weak and buckling the approach is both on and off the balance sheet in the shadow banking world. It is important that the political leaders of Europe tackle the problem courageously. The balance sheets of the banks, including those of Spain and Germany, must be considered. Mr. Simon Johnson recently produced a study of the Deutsche Bank balance sheet and noted it was far less strong, much more highly overleveraged and undercapitalised than people realised. Unless all of the banks are honest – it took a long time for the banks here to reach their current position but they are still not being honest-----