Colm Keaveney (Galway East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I agree with Deputy Durkan in the sense that it is as a consequence of a previous Government’s ineptitude, fiscal mismanagement and a weakness of democracy in this country that the debts of private banks were socialised into a sovereign debt with a significant amount of arm-twisting from the European institutions who forced this debt onto the shoulders of ordinary Irish people.

It is worth considering what the consequences would have been for the broader European banking system if we had not guaranteed the gambling debts of private banks. There is no doubt that we are culpable to a certain extent for the current domestic financial crisis but there is also no doubt that our arm was twisted on a night in September in the Department of Finance by officials in Europe, in particular from the European Central Bank, to prevent contagion across the Union. We got a unique response from Europe and a special response from the ECB. That leads to an expectation that what happened would be acknowledged. We should not have taken on the debts of some of those private banks, in particular Anglo Irish Bank, which was not systemic to the economy. It was an exclusive bank that meant nothing to ordinary people and the ECB essentially forced us to enter an arrangement that would cost the Exchequer somewhere in the region of €80 billion. We are culpable to the extent that we let it happen and we did not revolt or resist. We did not organise against it. The decision was done and dusted.

The agreement was made behind closed doors, without the consent of Irish people. The Parliament was forced to give a sovereign guarantee to private bank gamblers who gambled with the futures of young Irish people and their hopes for a sustainable existence within this country. That is the problem and I am sure it is replicated across the community, particularly on the periphery. This money came from somewhere, most likely from German and French banks, as a speaker noted. Essentially, we have taken a liability in order to secure the future viability of German and French financial institutions.