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

It is roll-overs. In fact, the more we show that we are managing the primary deficit and the correction of expenditure and the collection of revenues, the more it is not a problem. In that situation, however, a complacency can set in about the origin and provenance of the odious debt from the bank-related issues and it becomes easy to lull us into a sense that it can be done over ten or 15 years. In principle, it is wrong. It is not our debt. It should have been mutualised. It will be mutualised in the future and the ESM and all of these mechanisms are being set up to deal with these matters. It would be a very unfair situation if, for instance, Deutsche Bank decides to recognise €250 billion worth of provisions in a year's or 18 months' time and it gets the benefit of an ESM intervention and we do not, at the same time, clean up the entire household across Europe and mutualise and perpetualise it at a cheap rate? That is my point. I would ask the NTMA to use all its skills and experience, and the regard in which it is held, to use that argument. The NTMA should not be afraid and should come out from under its shell and do battle for us.

On Bank of Ireland, the three senior staff who were lost from the NTMA-Department of Finance arrangement all went to either Bank of Ireland or to other non-nationalised banks. That is telling in itself and I will not develop it any further. Also, on Bank of Ireland, I texted the Taoiseach before 31 July 2011, the capitalisation date for the banks, not to use the National Pensions Reserve Fund, carefully built up over the years, to capitalise it, and to insist at that point on creditor capitalisation for the reasons already stated. I said it should not be used the fund as it is the pension reserve fund for the State and we should not be strong-armed into raiding it. That is like taking our children's Holy Communion and Confirmation money to meet a bill. It was wrong. We should not have done it. To think that Wilbur Ross, Kennedy Wilson, Liberty, Fairfax and Carlyle got 35% of the infrastructure of a bank-----